THE WORLD FAMOUS HISTORY AND PAST EVENTS

  During Operation Varsity, paratroopers of the 17th Airborne Division take a ride on a Churchill Tank through Münster, Germany in March of 1945.  The 17th Airborne participated in its first and only airborne operation dropping alongside the British 6th Airborne Division as part of Operation Varsity. Their mission was to capture the village of Diersfordt and clear the rest of the Diersfordter Wald of any remaining German forces in order to aid the Allied ground forces in their advancement.  The “Golden Talons” of the 17th Airborne completed their mission and helped make Operation Varsity a success, but the cost of their first jump would be high with these brave paratroopers suffering a total of 1,346 casualties in five days of fighting…including 430 killed in action….Gone, but not forgotten 🇺🇸 The 746th FEAF Band recorded the only known album by a frontline band unit in the jungles of the Pacific. Stream and add/create a WW2 music playlist with these veterans’ music on ...

Captain Elliot Pflaum’s sacred duty before returning home Before returning to Australia in 1919, Captain Elliot ‘Tab’ Pflaum attended to an important personal matter.  He journeyed beyond the wrecked village of Poperinghe in Belgium to a vast cemetery that contained an endless vista of white crosses.  He walked along the rows until he found his brother, Theo’s grave. Tab stood behind the cross while a caretaker snapped a photograph.  Tab hoped this photograph would provide his mother Mary Jane some solace, after she had suffered the loss of her son Theo in 1917.  Yet Tab also knew there was no comfort for the unresolved grief that Mary Jane harboured for her other son, Ray, who had disappeared without trace at Fromelles in 1916.  Tab, who had departed Australia with his beloved ‘little’ brothers in 1915, returned home alone in May 1919.  As he walked up the family homestead’s winding drive and past the spreading oaks, he saw the empire flag that fluttered f...

Israel justifies arrests of Palestinians after images showing stripped men detained in Gaza Israel responded to the fierce criticism provoked by degrading photographs and videos showing dozens of naked men, some of them blindfolded, captured by the Israeli army on December 7.  The government took responsibility for the mass arrests carried out by the army in the Gaza Strip the previous day. This clarification came as human rights organizations reported the disappearance of civilians in Gaza while the army extended its control in the north of the enclave. Israel was responding to fierce criticism, provoked by the release of degrading photographs and videos showing dozens of men, young and old, in their underwear, hands tied, sometimes blindfolded, rounded up in the north of Gaza and, for some, transported in a military vehicle to an unknown destination. "We're talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks...

On May 30, 1832 a duel took place in Paris in which a young man — barely twenty years old — was lethally wounded. Much later, he turned out to be one of the greatest mathematical minds in history. Although it was clear during his lifetime that he had “some” talent as a mathematician, nobody really understood what most of the “gibberish” Galois wrote was really about. His papers and ideas were often rejected, he wasn’t allowed to enter the highly prestigious École Normale Supérieure, and he was a bit of a hothead as well — especially when not understood yet again. He simply was too much ahead of his time. To add insult to injury, he was also deeply involved in the French revolution, and was used to spending time in jail if the action required this. Galois was a rebel, on the streets, and also in the mathematical mist. Unfortunately, he was talked into a duel for unknown reasons, but most probably the cause of the dual was a broken love — some say she was a prostitute, others claims she ...

Lynching of George Meadows George Meadows was an African American man who was lynched on January 15, 1889, in Jefferson County, Alabama, United States. Lynching and aftermath On January 14, 1889, a white woman reported that she had been raped and her son killed by an African American man. Over 400 white coal miners formed themselves into groups and brought several black men to the woman, who was unable to identify any of them as the alleged criminal. The next day, the miners brought Meadows, a new arrival to the area, and after a brief investigation, determined him to be guilty. The woman begged the mob not to lynch Meadows, as she was unsure if he was the criminal, but the mob went forward with the lynching and killed him near the Pratt Mines. Following his death, his body was shot multiple times and left in public view by an undertaker. Meadows was later buried in a paupers' grave in what is now Lane Park in Birmingham, Alabama. On January 16, the sheriff decided that Mead...

Here’s why Civil War soldiers had wounds that glowed in the dark During the Civil War, a strange thing happened at night. In the cover of darkness, the silence of hunkering down during war, soldiers’ wounds would glow. Open, bleeding wounds actually appeared to glow a light, subdued greenish-blue. Almost as though they were human chem lights, only decades before they were even invented. This phenomenon was noted at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, where both sides were met with heavy losses. Taking place in southern Tennessee, wounded soldiers were left in the mud and rain for as long as two days before they were helped by medics. Due to the sheer amount of wounded soldiers, hospitals were overwhelmed and it took days to reach everyone. This perfect storm of disastrous events meant that for two nights, soldiers watched their glowing wounds in the dark Southern background -- they named the phenomenon “Angel’s Glow.” However, the source of the glow was chalked up to a mystery and left ...

Did a Man in Montana Catch a Three-Foot Long Grasshopper? In the 1930s, doctored postcards featuring giant grasshoppers sold "like hotcakes." Origin For several years, a black-and-white photograph purporting to show a man holding an enormous grasshopper has been widely shared on social media: The most obvious sign that the image is doctored, of course, is that grasshoppers simply don't get that big. The average grasshopper is only an inch or two long. Even the giant weta, a larger insect that resembles a grasshopper, only weighs about as much as a gerbil and grows to about four inches long. Moreover, if the image were real, the grasshopper would cast a shadow on the man's pants and on the ground, in the same direction as the man's shadow. An uncropped version of the photograph shows that it was copyrighted in 1937 to Coles Studio: The use of the copyright and the fact that other variations of this image were attached to various locales (such as North D...

Ever heard of a dead body making women pregnant? The Cemetery of Père-Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris. It gained worldwide fame for the most unusual reasons because of one young man - Victor Noir. It is believed that if a woman kisses the statue of Victor Noir on the lips, rubs the bulge in his trousers and drops a flower in his hat it will bring her enhanced fertility, and a blissful sex life. More specifically - if you want to find a beautiful lover, you should kiss Noir`s lips; if you want to get pregnant, you should touch his right foot; and if you want to have twins, you should touch his left foot. According to the myth, a baby will follow soon after and single ladies will find a husband within the year. Victor Noir’s lips, groin and shoes are shiny, while the rest of his body has the usual greenish tone of oxidized bronze because of how those parts was touched often.  That was why in 2004 a fence was placed around the statue of Noir with a warning sign: “Any damage ...

AFTERMATH OF BATAAN DEATH MARCH - 1942 Defeated Allied soldiers after their surrender to Japanese forces on the Philippines' Bataan Peninsula in April 1942. Photo Colorization by Adlai Jan Garcia Jawid The Bataan Death March (Filipino: Martsa ng Kamatayan sa Bataan; Japanese: バターン死の行進, Hepburn: Batān Shi no Kōshin) was the forcible transfer by the Imperial Japanese Army of 60,000–80,000 American and Filipino prisoners of war from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan and Mariveles to Camp O'Donnell, Capas, Tarlac, via San Fernando, Pampanga, where the prisoners were loaded onto trains. The transfer began on April 9, 1942, after the three-month Battle of Bataan in the Philippines during World War II. The total distance marched from Mariveles to San Fernando and from the Capas Train Station to Camp O'Donnell is variously reported by differing sources as between 60 and 69.6 miles (96.6 and 112.0 km). Differing sources also report widely differing prisoner of war casualties prior to rea...

Japanese soldiers engaged in acts of cannibalism during World War II, even when not starving.  One medical student witnessed horrific experiments done on American POWs, including organ removal and even allegations that a prisoner's liver was eaten. Many soldiers claimed they only ate human flesh out of desperation, but evidence often shows otherwise. The documentary The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On follows one Japanese veteran trying to expose the truth about war crimes. In it, former soldiers admit to cannibalism, even killing their own for food. In 1992, historian Toshiyuki Tanaka revealed over 100 documented cases of cannibalism by Japanese troops in Papua New Guinea, based on Allied accounts. He argued some ate human flesh to feel victory, not just survive. Other examples demonstrate cannibalism not for survival. The Suzuki Unit in the Philippines reportedly captured and butchered Filipinos for food despite having rations. While some soldiers like Hiroo Onoda managed to ...

A group of Australian War Correspondents visited a PoW camp and found shocking conditions of cruelty.  The camp was about fifteen miles out of Yokosuka Naval Base, and the Corespondents were the first to find the POWs. The camp was not registered (with the International Red Cross) and all the 103 occupants, comprising ninety eight Americans, four British and one New Zealander, were reported dead some time ago.  The men had been cruelly beaten and maltreated, but for the past week or two they had better treatment and were given a chance to pick up. American planes had dropped comforts and clothing to them. The Japanese guards who had beaten the men were taken from the camp and replaced by others a week before the occupation.  Almost every day "Bimbo" beatings were administered. Here Chief Petty Officer (CPO) Harold Newman RN of Carshalton, Surrey, England, assumes the position only too well as the "Afuna crouch". He is demonstrating to the Australian officers, the cr...

Soldier’s unearthed diary provides insight into graves recovery work.  A Great War soldier’s 100-year-old diary was recently discovered amongst a jumble of records in a Brisbane store. And thanks to the efforts of State Library of Queensland volunteers, it has been transcribed.  The transcription provides a remarkable insight into Claude Fraser’s work with the Australian Graves Detachment.  When 18-year-old Claude reached France in 1918, the war had ended.  Rather than return home, Claude volunteered to help recover and identify some of the 46,000 Australians who had died on the Western Front.  The graves recovery work began in April 1919, when Claude and 1,000 comrades started searching for bodies in the battlefields surrounding Villers-Bretonneux. An early diary entry reads: ‘Commenced work at 8.30am. Seven bodies in one shell hole, bodies hardly decomposed.’  The exhumed remains were wrapped in hessian, stacked on a wagon, and transported to a cemetery f...

A group of naked Soviet POWs, who in the fall of 1944 were sent back to the Mauthausen main camp from the satellite camp of Melk, stand in line during a roll call. Administrative Notes BiographyMauthausen concentration camp photographers Antonio Garcia (or Antonio Garcia Alonso) and Francisco Boix (or Francesc Boix Campo) were among thousands of Spanish Republicans who were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War, Spanish Republicans fled to France where they were interned. After Germany's invasion of France, some 30,000 of these were deported to concentration camps in Germany and Austria for their Communist political affiliation. Approximately 8,000 were sent to Mauthausen. Though most of these prisoners were sent to work in the quarries, some were given administrative jobs. Among the later group were Antonio Garcia and Francisco Boix. Boix was sent to Mauthausen on January 27, 1941. Because of his facility...

Eyewitness gives history of how the malnourished naked woman came to be found at Ajah Eyewitness gives history of how the malnourished naked woman came to be found at Ajah Eyewitness gives history of how the malnourished naked woman came to be found at Ajah A video of a severely malnourished naked woman, standing under the Jubilee Bridge in Ajah, shocked Nigerians when it went viral this morning and people wondered how she found herself in such situation. A reader of LIB who claims to be an eyewitness has now given an update. Wole Elekula says the woman was not thrown out of a moving car as claimed by the Twitter user who shared the story (read here). He says she was found fully-clothed in a bush in Ajah by a man. The man who found her brought her to the road where she became a spectacle as people gathered to gawk at her for a whole day. She reportedly took her clothes off the day after and stayed there until her story went viral and help came. An update from those who took her o...

Recovering Gallipoli’s Missing Soldiers In November 1918, Lieutenant Cyril Hughes and his graves registration section landed on Gallipoli on a bleak day that winter storms punished the rugged terrain. Hughes was confronted with a landscape of broken trenches, and rusted barbed wire. He could see the bones of hastily buried soldiers from a mile away as broad white streaks down the ravines. Hughes’ section joined the British Graves Registration Unit, which would find, identify, record, and temporarily protect every British and dominion grave, and bury any unburied dead. Hughes had a strong connection to Gallipoli, landing there in May 1915. He was twice wounded before being evacuated. Hughes regretted abandoning his comrades’ graves: ‘In 1915 we did not quite finish our job,’ he explained, ‘but, by Heaven, we would see it out this time.’ An immense task confronted Hughes’ section. Of 12,000 Allied soldiers who had died in the Anzac sector, nearly 6,000 were unburied, their remains scatte...

Burned body at Gardenlegen, Germany Gardelegen massacre The Gardelegen massacre was a massacre perpetrated by the locals (Volkssturm, Hitlerjugend and local firefighters) of the northern German town of Gardelegen, with direction from the SS, near the end of World War II. On April 13, 1945, on the Isenschnibbe estate near the town, the troops forced over 1,000 slave laborers who were part of a transport train evacuated from the Mittelbau-Dora and Hannover-Stöcken concentration camps into a large barn, which was then set on fire. A photograph originally captioned "This victim of Nazi inhumanity still rests in the position in which he died, attempting to rise and escape his horrible death. He was one of 1016 prisoners savagely burned to death by Nazi SS troops. Gardelegen, Germany; 16 April 1945" One thousand and sixteen people, of whom the largest number were Poles, were burned alive or shot trying to escape. The crime was discovered two days later by Company F, 2nd Battal...