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Dandara dos Santos, 42, was taken from her home, beaten, stripped and thrown in a wheelbarrow before being taken away to be killed.
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The gang of six men who attacked her laughed and cheered as they kicked, punched and beat her with shoes and plank of wood. The terrified woman, who lived in Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil, is seen wiping blood from her face and body in the video while pleading with her…
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The pain of separating from their son was so unbearable that Emily and Frank Ullman made a stunning promise before sending their only child into hiding.
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“We promised to each other we wouldn’t talk about our son,” Emily remembered decades later. For more than two years, Emily and Frank survived hidden in an attic, wondering if their toddler, Leo, was alive—and imagining how big he might have grown. But they weren’t allowed to know where he…
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‘Shell Shock’
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Captain John Harris was completely exhausted when he collapsed on 24 July 1916. At Pozières, his battalion had suffered under one of the heaviest bombardments of the war. Harris recalled seeing descending shells in their last 40 feet of flight. ‘The only thing to do was grin and bear it.’ …
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Lieutenant Bill Heptinstall’s M4 Sherman from New Zealand’s 20th Armoured Regiment, lays knocked out down the side of a road next the Tiger I tank that destroyed it.
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The Tiger has been self-destroyed and abandoned by its crew, possibly leaving it there as a road block. Florence, Italy. August 4th, 1944. From the 13th of June to the 13th of July 1944, the New Zealand 20th Armoured Regiment was given a rest period in the Liri Valley, after…
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On 20 June 1942, four prisoners escape Auschwitz through the front gate, disguised as SS officers.
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Among them is the Polish 22-year-old Kazimierz Piechowski. During the first days of the war, he saw how the Germans killed his friends from the boy scouts, who were perceived as potential sources of resistance. Knowing that he will suffer a similar fate if he doesn’t flee, Piechowski decided to…
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On May 11, 1943, 12,500 U.S. soldiers landed on the northern and southern ends of Attu Island. For over two weeks, battles raged over the tiny island.
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There were few large-scale engagements; as in the rest of the Pacific Theater, the Japanese preferred to employ “small group” tactics, using the rough terrain of Attu to their advantage and lying motionless for hours in foxholes until they could pin down American units with sniper fire. As they moved…
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During World War I, the youngest soldier was a 7-year-old boy, Momchilo Gavriku.
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The youngest soldier ever who was officially a soldier and fighting in a unit was the 7-year old Momčilo Gavrić. He was born in 1907. near Loznica, Serbia. At the beginning of the war, in August, 1914., Austro-Hungarian soldiers of the 42nd Croatian Home Guard Infantry Division maimed and hanged…
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On This Day 77 Years Ago…
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On June 15, 1944, U.S. Marines stormed the beaches of this strategically significant Japanese island of Saipan with a goal of gaining a crucial air base from which the U.S. could launch its new long-range B-29 bombers directly at Japan’s home islands. Saipan, the second largest island in the Marianas,…
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Last weeks of 1942 were a turning point of WWII. At Stalingrad, German 6th Army was already doomed, while the second battle of El Alamein and “Operation Torch” neutralized the Axis threat to North Africa, the Suez Canal and the Middle East.
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➡ In November, New York saw the premiere of “Casablanca,” set in the Vichy France colony of Morocco. One of the main characters in the movie was Victor Laszlo, member of Czech resistance fleeing from the Germans. Some people say he was modelled on a real person. ➡ If so,…
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Evidence of early human presence in the Arctic found on an ancient Woolly Mammoth :
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Paleolithic records of humans in the Eurasian Arctic (above 66°N) are scarce, stretching back to 30,000 to 35,000 years ago at most. Pitulko et al. have found evidence of human occupation 45,000 years ago at 72°N, well within the Siberian Arctic. The evidence is in the form of a frozen…