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28 MAY 1588 The Spanish Armada set sail with 130 ships and 30,000 men and headed for the English Channel. Its aim was to travel to the Netherlands where an additional 30,000 soldiers were waiting to be transported for a huge planned invasion of England.  The aim of the Armada was to overthrow Queen Elizabeth I and her Protestant regime. It was prompted by Elizabeth's sanctioned execution of Mary, Queen of Scots but King Philip II of Spain's had other reasons to invade England. He wanted to stop English interference in the Spanish Netherlands where they were assisting Dutch Protestant rebels. The plan also aimed to stop English and Dutch privateering against Spanish ships in the Americas.  English ships sailed from Plymouth to attack the Armada as it progressed through the English Channel before anchoring off Calais. The Armada was damaged at the Battle of Gravelines before the Spanish fleet was driven by unfavourable winds up the eastern coast of England.  The Armada failed to

The Father of England - King Alfred the Great burns some cakes and defeats the Vikings (Danes) at the Battle of Ethandun (878): For years, the kingdom of Wessex in Britain, ruled by Alfred, had been under attack from Viking forces. Alfred had maintained a tenuous hold on his throne, but in the beginning of 878, he was forced to flee into the marshes of Somerset to hide from yet another Viking invasion. His time there marked a significant turning point in the history of England and the medieval world. Alfred could have chosen to stay in the swamp and eke out a peasant’s existence, but instead, he emerged to battle the Vikings and, in doing so, shaped the England we know today. . . . Alfred was a scion of the kingdom of the West Saxons, the most powerful and long-lived of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. But at the end of the 8th century, the Viking diaspora had suddenly changed all that, and in 878, after bearing the indignity of multiple military defeats and the deaths of all the adult males

Plataea (479 BC) - The battle where Western civilization hung in the balance: The Battle of Plataea was fought between the united city-states of ancient Greece and the mighty Persian Empire, and while it was the most important battle of the Greco-Persian Wars, it is not nearly as well-known as three other battles. Thermopylae was a Greek defeat, and Marathon and Salamis, although Greek victories, were only temporary setbacks for Persia, which returned to the fight each time. Plataea, however, was decisive and effectively ended the Persian invasion. If the Greeks had lost this battle and become merely one more province of the Persian Empire, the cultural flourishing of Greece in the 5th century BC might not have taken place. This victory ensured the continued independence of the Greek city-states - permitting an astonishingly rich period of art, science, and philosophy to begin which would lay the foundations for Western civilization. So much was on the line and so stacked the odds seemed

"It was while I was in this Field Hospital that I saw the first case of shell-shock. The enemy opened fire about dinner time, as usual, with his big guns. As soon as the first shell came over, the shell-shock case nearly went mad. He screamed and raved, and it took eight men to hold him down on the stretcher. With every shell he would go into a fit of screaming and fight to get away. A much larger number of soldiers with these symptoms were classified as 'malingerers' and sent back to the front-line. In some cases men committed suicide. Others broke down under the pressure and refused to obey the orders of their officers. Some responded to the pressures of shell-shock by deserting. Sometimes soldiers who disobeyed orders got shot on the spot. In some cases, soldiers were court-martialled. It is heartbreaking to watch a shell-shock case. The terror is indescribable. The flesh on their faces shakes in fear, and their teeth continually chatter. Shell-shock was brought about i

My granny told me stories of flood she experienced in her life. While describing the devastation, I can still remember, I saw her teary eyes. She mesmerized how fierce the wind force was, how her thatched hut fell down, how the goats washed away!! She had five pieces of rusty breads for the four family members from the relief fund.  No food, no clean water, no medication! People stood up the whole night and the whole day in the water logged huts, and then, they slept for a couple of hours on the banana rafts. Flood in Bangladesh in 1987 was a complete horror. It was also the year I was also born in, and my granny and my mother told me later, how hard it was to keep me alive.  I stole the photo to describe the memory.

In 1999, some people made a remarkable but horrible discovery near the summit of Volcán Llullaillaco in Argentina. It was the bodies of  three Inca children who had been the victims of a ritual sacrifice. They were found with gold and silver statues aswell as food in a shrine over 20,000 ft above sea level. Evidence from their bodies show they were consuming alcohol and coca leaves during their final years and the girl in the picture still had coca leaves in her mouth. One of the victims had strangely been stuck by lightning after death. They were so well preserved from the cold conditions that there was still traces of a lung infection in the pictured girls lungs and lice in the hair of another, 500 years after their deaths. These people back then, including the children, believed they were doing the right thing; it was seen has an honour to be sacrificed and children were seen as the purest of beings, which is why they were selected.

On February 4th, 1999, Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23-year-old Guinean immigrant was shot 41 TIMES by American police officers for bringing his wallet out to identify himself, as he couldn't speak English.  All 4 cops who shot him dead were found not guilty.

Volkswagen was founded On May 28, 1937, the government of Germany–then under the control of Adolf Hitler of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party–forms a new state-owned automobile company, then known as Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH. Later that year, it was renamed simply Volkswagenwerk, or “The People’s Car Company.” Originally operated by the German Labor Front, a Nazi organization, Volkswagen was headquartered in Wolfsburg, Germany. In addition to his ambitious campaign to build a network of autobahns and limited access highways across Germany, Hitler’s pet project was the development and mass production of an affordable yet still speedy vehicle that could sell for less than 1,000 Reich marks (about $140 at the time). To provide the design for this “people’s car,” Hitler called in the Austrian automotive engineer Ferdinand Porsche. In 1938, at a Nazi rally, the Fuhrer declared: “It is for the broad masses that this car has been built. Its purpose is to a

Auschwitz gets a new doctor: “the Angel of Death” On May 24, 1943, the extermination camp at Auschwitz, Poland, receives a new doctor, 32-year-old Josef Mengele, a man who will earn the nickname “the Angel of Death.” Born March 16, 1911, in Bavaria, Mengele studied philosophy under Alfred Rosenberg, whose racial theories highly influenced him. In 1934, already a member of the Nazi Party, he joined the research staff of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene. Upon arriving at Auschwitz, and eager to advance his medical career by publishing “groundbreaking” work, he began experimenting on live Jewish prisoners. In the guise of medical “treatment,” he injected, or ordered others to inject, thousands of inmates with everything from petrol to chloroform. He also had a penchant for studying twins, whom he used to dissect. Mengele managed to escape imprisonment after the war, first by working as a farm stableman in Bavaria, then by making his way to South America. He became a

Ship carrying 937 Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazi Germany, is turned away in Cuba On May 27, 1939, A boat carrying 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution is turned awayfrom Havana, Cuba. Only 28 immigrants are admitted into the country. After appeals to the United States and Canada for entry are denied, the rest are forced to sail back to Europe, where they’re distributed among several countries including Great Britain and France. On May 13, the S.S. St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany to Havana, Cuba. Most of the passengers—many of them children—were German Jews escaping increasing persecution under the Third Reich. Six months earlier, 91 people were killed and Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed in what became known as the Kristallnacht pogrom. It was becoming increasing clear the Nazis were accelerating their efforts to exterminate Jews by arresting them and placing them in concentration camps.World War II and the formal implementation of The Final Solutio

Polish war hero Witold Pilecki was executed  On May 25, 1948, Witold Pilecki was executed by communist authorities, in the Rakowiecka detention center after a show trial.  During World War II, Pilecki volunteered for a Polish resistance operation that involved being imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp in order to gather intelligence. At Auschwitz, he organized a resistance movement within the camp which eventually numbered in the hundreds, and secretly sent messages to the Western Allies detailing Nazi atrocities at the camp. He escaped in April 1943 after nearly 2½ years of imprisonment. Pilecki later fought in the Warsaw Uprising from August to October 1944. He remained loyal to the London-based Polish government in-exile after the communist takeover of Poland. In 1947, he was arrested by the secret police on charges of working for "foreign imperialism" (referring to his work for British intelligence). Pilecki was executed after a show trial in 1948. The story of

On May 25, Edmund Semrau, one of the last soldiers of the 1st Polish Armored Division of General Stanisław Maczek passed away. Capt. Edmund Semrau was born on January 21, 1926, in Chełmno. In September 1939 he and his family were evacuated to the eastern borderlands of Poland, later after 17 September, he was deported to Siberia with his family. Thanks to the Sikorski - Majski agreement taken over in July 1941, after long wandering, he came with many soldiers of General Anders to the British Isles to Scotland. As soon as he reached the age of majority in 1943, he volunteered to serve in the 1st Polish Armored Division created by General Maczek. He received specialized training at the Armored Weapons Training Center in Catterick. After receiving the assignment to the 2nd Squadron of the 1st Armored Regiment, he went through his entire battle trail from the fields of Normandy, through France, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the winning final in Germany. In August 1944 he took part in a l

The Ash Casts of Pompeii Mount Vesuvius, a volcano near the Bay of Naples in Italy, has erupted more than 50 times. Its most famous eruption took place in the year 79 A.D., when the volcano buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii under a thick carpet of volcanic ash. The dust “poured across the land” like a flood, one witness wrote, and shrouded the city in “a darkness…like the black of closed and unlighted rooms.” Two thousand people died, and the city was abandoned for almost as many years. When a group of explorers rediscovered the site in 1748, they were surprised to find that–underneath a thick layer of dust and debris–Pompeii was mostly intact. The buildings, artifacts and skeletons left behind in the buried city have taught us a great deal about everyday life in the ancient world. The bodies of Pompeii had been covered in layers of fine ash that calcified over the centuries, forming a type of protective shell around their bodies. When the skin and tissue of these bodies eventua

George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person sentenced to death in the 20th century in the United States. He was only 14 when he was executed by electric chair. During his trial, until the day of his execution, he always carried a bible in his hands, claiming for innocence. He was accused of killing two white girls, Betty of 11 years old and Mary of 7, the bodies were found near the house where the teenager resided with his parents. At that time all the jurors were white. The trial lasted only 2 hours and the sentence was handed down 10 minutes later. The child's parents were threatened and prevented from giving him gifts in the courtroom and then expelling them from that city. Before the execution, George spent 81 days without being able to see his parents. He was trapped in a solitary cell, 80 km from his city. He was heard alone without the presence of his parents or a lawyer. He was electrocuted with 5,380 volts in the head. 70 years later, his innocence was finally proven by a j

Suitcases of people sent to concentration camps. Poland, Gdańsk, World War II Museum. Each suitcase is a family, a life. It looks like a monument to the crime of humanity.😢 1918 spanish flu... *** Unprecedented Сomfort in the Air by 1939 Not bad a location for the Unknown Planet TV-series, indeed. Such a plane was made by Boeing, as many as 12 were released, not a single one survived until 2020, though, unfortunately. The passenger compartment had one general layout. All passengers were served as VIP. On Transatlantic flights, the plane could be in the air for more than 12 hours, but comfort was unprecedented. Chairs were laid out in sleeping shelves (36 pcs.). There was a lounge and a restaurant served by stewards. The menu contained 6 dishes served on porcelain dishes with silver cutlery. Male and female restrooms were separate. A ticket cost $675 round-trip New York-England and $760 one-way San Francisco-Hong Kong. The first such Boeing 314 flew from San Francisco to Hong Kong in J

This is Corporal Wojtek (pr. Voy-check). He was an orphaned Syrian brown bear that was adopted by a Polish artillery unit in WW2. The rank is not a nickname, he was actually sworn in and received pay in the form of extra rations as well as beer and cigarettes. He loved to box and wrestle with the men and was a huge morale boost but he was much more than just a mascot or pet. He taught himself how to carry artillery shells and supplies and was said to do the work of 4 men (although he ate as much as 10.) It was even said that he would drag wounded men off the battlefield as long as they weren't speaking in German.  After the war he retired to a boring but comfortable life in the Edinburgh zoo. He always got excited when ever he heard visitors speaking Polish. His former comrades would often visit him and toss cigarettes over the fence for old times sake.  He died in 1963 at age 21. To this day his former unit still wears his likeness on their insignia.