history

Chris Knight's avatar

The second bestselling nonfiction book of all time – surpassed only by the Bible – owes its publication to this fine lady…

Miep Gies and her husband Jan were the Dutch couple who hid Otto Frank and his family in an Amsterdam office building’s secluded annex from 1942 to 1944. For more than two years, Miep and Jan Gies smuggled food and other provisions to the Franks and other Jews, protecting them as they could from the Nazi regime that was controlling the Netherlands.

In August of 1944 (not long after the invasion of Normandy) the Gestapo discovered the hiding place and captured everyone. Not long afterward Miep Gies was allowed to return and while there she gathered up numerous personal belongings in hopes of returning them. Scattered on the floor were pages of Anne Frank’s diary. In 1947 it was published and became a worldwide sensation for all time....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

They were seven of the most famous (and notorious) men in history. And not one of them went gently into that good night. As a matter of fact, they all had some of the most hardcore awesome deaths ever recorded. Like Blackbeard (shown at right in his final battle). By the way, here in the Tarheel State there’s a longstanding legend that Blackbeard’s skull has been gilded in silver and turned into a goblet for use during initiation rituals at one of the UNC Chapel Hill frats. But anyway…

Cracked.com has documented seven historical figures who were absurdly hard to kill. If you don’t mind a bit of profanity lacing the chronicles, it’s quite a good read.

(Thanks again to Shane Thacker for a great find!)...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It was on this date in 1944 that Adolf Hitler launched Nazi Germany’s final major offensive of World War II. In an act of desperation, Hitler went for broke and threw in just about all of his reserves for one big operation, in the hope that he could stave off the Allies’ occupation of western Europe.

The Germans called it “Operation: Watch on the Rhine”. Among the Allies it was officially referred to as the “Ardennes-Alsace Campaign”. For General Anthony McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne it was simply “Nuts!”

But you and I know it better as the Battle of the Bulge.

It was perhaps the hardest-fought battle of the European theater. It would have been that even without the snow and ice and freezing temperatures that the Allies (mostly American but several British as well) were forced to endure.

But in the end, more than a month later, ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Ever wonder what the Singing Dogs of the “Dogs singing ‘Jingle Bells'” look like?

Here they are!

The “Jingle Bells” cover is attributed most to Pearl (center of top row) although Caesar, King, Dolly and Pussy also turned in solid renditions of “Pat-A-Cake”, “O Susanna” and “Three Blind Mice”.

Want to know the real history of “Dogs Singing ‘Jingle Bells'”? Click here for the story of the Caroling Dogs of Copenhagen....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It was sixty-eight years ago today that Pearl Harbor in Hawaii came under attack from the military forces of the Empire of Japan, propelling the United States into World War II. And we’ve known for awhile now that among those forces were a fleet of “mini submarines”: five midget submersibles that were to enter the harbor and attempt to sink American battleships. However four of them ran aground or were destroyed before the attack and wound up playing no part in it at all.

But what of the fifth Japanese mini-sub?

There’s been evidence for decades – particularly an intercepted radio transmission from the day after the ambush reporting on the success of the mini-sub – but no hard proof of the role it might have played. Historians have debated it for years.

But today history has one less mystery. The scuttled remains of the fifth Japanese mini-sub have been ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

My DVR just received a massive enema. Gone is stuff that I’ve recorded like P2 and Krull and Clash of the Titans and Stroker Ace (though how that got scheduled is beyond me, and I’m still trying to figure out how I wound up with Yentl). So now I’ve got plenty of disk space to record WWII in HD from the History Channel.

HOW did I miss hearing about this until now? Well, no matter ‘cuz History Channel is broadcasting them again and if you’ve got a high-definition television you really owe it to yourself to catch this, because you’ve never seen World War II as clear and brilliant as this before. See that still image? Those are British soldiers coming ashore at Normandy, and it looks so crisp and sharp you’d swear that this was footage gathered just yesterday.

If History Channel puts this out on Blu-ray… well, ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

It was built by the East German government in 1961.

It completely encircled what was then West Berlin.

It was one of the most tangible symbols of the Cold War.

It was declared by communists throughout the world that the wall would last forever.

I know of no better additional commentary that can possibly be made besides this picture of the chunk of the Berlin Wall that I have owned since 1993…

Read more about the Berlin Wall on Wikipedia....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

Fifteen years after it first offered free web space for anybody, GeoCities is shutting down today.

I can’t remember the last time that I went to a GeoCities-hosted page. But once upon the time they glittered across cyberspace like sand on the seashore, mostly for “personal home pages”. Those are dying out now, being supplanted by blogs like this one.

It can’t be said enough though, that a lot of us today took our first steps into that larger world with GeoCities. Mark Milian writes a fine send-off for the service at the Los Angeles Times site and if you want a tribute to just about every GeoCities page that ever got created, click here....

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

‘Tis painfully ironic that these observations are being made in Pravda, of all places. Stanislav Mishin writes…

It can be safely said, that the last time a great nation destroyed itself through its own hubris and economic folly was the early Soviet Union (though in the end the late Soviet Union still died by the economic hand). Now we get the opportunity to watch the Americans do the exact same thing to themselves. The most amazing thing of course, is that they are just repeating the failed mistakes of the past. One would expect their fellow travelers in suicide, the British, to have spoken up by now, but unfortunately for the British, their education system is now even more of a joke than that of the Americans…

(snip)

That brings us to Cap and Trade. Never in the history of humanity has a more idiotic plan been put forward

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

For all the frustration that independent content producers such as myself are running into with multi-billion dollar media companies regarding YouTube and other self-publishing outlets, it’s comforting to know that we are not the first… and no doubt won’t be the last either.

Putting it into perspective, Nate Anderson has composed a very good piece over at Ars Technica titled “100 years of Big Content fearing technology-in its own words”. In it Anderson documents a century of hysteria on the part of copyright holders that in retrospect is absolutely laughable: everything from fears of the photocopier after World War II and how some dreaded the coming of the VCR, on back to John Philip Sousa’s screed against player pianos and gramophones (pictured). It’s only too interesting to note that in spite of all of the “warnings”, that there has been no evidence at all that technology has stifled creativity… or ...

Read more