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John Smith – who po!s0ned his fiancée.
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On Monday the 15th of March 1824, 25 year old John Smith climbed the steps of Lincoln Castle’s Cobb Tower to the gallows erected on the flat roof. He was to hang for the murder of 24-year-old Sarah Arrowsmith, who was his fiancée. A large crowd had assembled to…
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John Lee – “The man they could not hang”.
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One of hangman James Berry’s most famous (non) jobs was the strange case of John Lee at 8.00 a.m. on Monday the 23rd of February 1885 at Exeter prison. All the normal preparations were made on the gallows, set up in the coach house, but when Berry operated the lever,…
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The Apache Woman Warrior Who Helped Lead Resistance to European Invaders.
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Lozen fought against Mexican and American forces for 30 years, earning the nickname ‘Apache Joan of Arc.’ Native American warriors like Sitting Bull (Lakota), Tecumseh (Shawnee) and Geronimo (Apache) have long been celebrated as defenders of Indigenous territories. Their courageous resistance to foreign invaders helped to ensure cultural survival. One…
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Nerissa and Katherine Bowes-Lyon The Hidden Disabled Cousins of Queen Elizabeth.
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Nerissa Jane Irene Bowes-Lyon (18 February 1919 – 22 January 1986) and Katherine Juliet Bowes-Lyon (4 July 1926 – 23 February 2014) were two of the daughters of John Herbert Bowes-Lyon and his wife Fenella (née Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis). John was the brother of Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the Queen Mother, so the…
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Gordon Frederick Cummins – the “Blackout Ripper”.
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A serial killer stalked the streets of London in February 1942. He murdered four women over a six day period. The first victim was 40 year old Evelyn Hamilton whose body was discovered in an air raid shelter at Montagu Place in Marylebone on Sunday the 7th of February. …
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One of the worst Nazi concentration camps uncovered by Allied troops during liberation was in Wobbelin, Germany.
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Soldiers of three Allied units––the 82nd U.S. Airborne Division, the Eighth Infantry Division of the Ninth U.S. Army and airborne troops of the Second British Army––entered the camp on May 4, 1945 and found sick, starving inmates barely surviving under indescribable conditions of filth and squalor. It’s estimated that at…
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Ghost Ship” Called The Ss Ourang Medan.
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In the 1940s, an eerie story about a mysterious “ghost ship” called the SS Ourang Medan began appearing in newspapers around the world. Each version of the tale varied slightly, but most agreed on a few key points. The Dutch vessel was traveling through the Strait of Malacca near Indonesia…
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Women and Sexual Assault in the United States, 1900–1940
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In the United States, the history of sexual assault in the first half of the 20th century involves multiple contradictions between the ordinary, almost invisible accounts of women of all colors who were raped by fathers, husbands, neighbors, boarders, bosses, hired hands, and other known individuals versus the sensational myths…
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MASS SHOOTINGS AT BABYN YAR (BABI YAR)
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On September 19, 1941, German forces entered the city of Kyiv (Kiev), the capital of Ukraine. Along with a large part of German-occupied Ukraine, the city was incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Ukraine which had been established on September 1 with Erich Koch as administrator (Reichskommissar). Before the German invasion, some 160,000 Jews…
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Sgt. 1st Class Mark DWayne Jenkins: A tribute for a soldier I will miss
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By Col. Donald P. Laucirica Colorado National Guard I first got to know Sergeant Jenkins when, as the new Special Operations Detachment commander, we conducted a commander’s inventory, required as part of taking command. He was outgoing, loud, and entirely unconcerned about what impression he was making on me, the incoming…