history
Carol Stream (United States) (AFP) - Richard Rung recalls it vividly: German artillery firing on his landing craft, the sound of machine gun bullets striking the vessel, blood mixed with seawater on the deck, troops crying on the beach. It has been nearly eight decades since Rung landed in France on D-Day -- June 6, 1944 -- as a 19-year-old US Navy sailor, part of a massive amphibious invasion that broke through German coastal defenses in a key victory for Allied forces. He now lives in a suburb of Chicago with Dorothy, his wife of 75 years, but his memories of the violence and death he witnes...
AFP
Kingwood (United States) (AFP) - Before a T. rex can tower over museum visitors or a Triceratops can show off its huge horns, dinosaur fossils must first be painstakingly reconstructed -- cleaned, fit together and even painted. For US restorationist Lauren McClain, the process is like putting together a giant 3D puzzle. McClain's job begins at her home workshop near Houston, Texas, where she carefully clears away dirt stuck to the more than 60-million-year-old remains using a tiny drill with an air compressor, similar to a dentist's tool. Then, she must assemble this ancient puzzle -- even t...
AFP
Plabennec (France) (AFP) - Aimee Dupre had always kept silent about the rape of her mother by two American soldiers after the Normandy landings in June 1944. But 80 years after the brutal assault, she finally felt it was time to speak out. Nearly a million US, British, Canadian and French soldiers landed on the Normandy coast in the weeks after D-Day in an operation that was to herald the end of Nazi Germany's grip on Europe. Aimee was 19, living in Montours, a village in Brittany, and delighted to see the "liberators" arrive, as was everybody around her. But then her joy evaporated. On the ev...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Russian dissident historian Tamara Eidelman was on vacation in Greece when Moscow's tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022 and she realized that she would not be going back to her home country. With her single suitcase, Eidelman, 65, flew to Portugal, where her daughter had been living, and began a new life in exile. "I am operating under the assumption that I will not return. I am building my life in Portugal," Eidelman, who has over 1.6 million followers on her history channel on YouTube, told AFP. "I want to come back… but if I sit every day thinking 'When will it f...
AFP
Boston (AFP) - Propelled to prominence by the blockbuster film "Oppenheimer", papers charting the world-changing creation of the atomic bomb by the eponymous physicist are up for auction in the United States. Christopher Nolan's $1 billion-grossing epic immortalizes the story of the wartime race to create nuclear weapons, with the film the leading contender at the Academy Awards Sunday. It has received 13 nominations, including for best picture, best actor and best director. Among the items to go under the hammer in Boston is a report on the birth of the atomic bomb which was subsequently used...
AFP
Kumasi (Ghana) (AFP) - A California museum on Thursday returned seven royal artefacts to Ghana’s traditional Ashanti king to commemorate his silver jubilee in the first planned handovers of Ashanti treasures looted during colonial times. The ceremony came as pressure grows for European and US museums and institutions to restore African artefacts stolen during the rule of former colonial powers Britain, France, Germany and Belgium. The Ghana royal treasures from the Fowler Museum, including a gold necklace, an ornamental chair and an elephant tail whisk, were presented during a ceremony of chi...
AFP
Kraków (Poland) (AFP) - Elon Musk on Monday took part in what he called an "incredibly moving" tour of Auschwitz and defended his X platform against accusations of anti-semitism just weeks after sparking a political storm by endorsing an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory. The European Jewish Association said Musk laid a wreath and participated in a memorial service at the former Nazi death camp alongside EJA chairman, Rabbi Menachem Margolin. Photos showed Musk at the site with his son on his shoulders. "It was incredibly moving and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to other humans.....
AFP
New York (AFP) - A treasure trove of Winston Churchill's possessions including his desk, a holiday painting from a trip to Morocco, and a copy of his first book go on sale in New York on Thursday. An imposing portrait of the British wartime leader by Hungarian artist Arthur Pan, sold at the height of the Second World War in 1943 to fundraise for Clementine Churchill's Aid to Russia Fund, is listed for $125,000. The pieces, are on sale at the Winter Show art, antiques and design fair in New York until January 28, were acquired from the heir to the Forbes media fortune Steve Forbes. "We've bough...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - The midwestern US state of Minnesota has unveiled a new flag after ditching its old one that depicted a farmer beside a rifle and a Native American on horseback. Criticized for years as racially insensitive, the old flag is being replaced by a light blue and dark blue design with a white star, based on an idea by local artist Andrew Prekker. Prekker said Tuesday that he hoped "that every Minnesotan of every background -- including the Indigenous communities and tribal nations who've been historically excluded -- can look up at our flag with pride and honor." The previous fla...
AFP
New York (AFP) - New York state said on Tuesday that it would establish a commission to study reparations for slavery and victims of racism, following a similar undertaking in California, which pioneered the approach to such historical injustices in the United States. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation creating a "commission on reparations, remedies and acknowledges the fundamental injustice and inhumanity of slavery," her office said in a statement. "In New York, we like to think we're on the right side of this. Slavery was a product of the South, the Confederacy," said the g...
AFP
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