On this day:

[BarnBuster]

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On April 19, 1943, Himmler sent in SS forces and their collaborators with tanks and heavy artillery to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto.
In Warsaw, Poland, Nazi forces attempting to clear out the city’s Jewish ghetto are met by gunfire from Jewish resistance fighters, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins.

Shortly after the German occupation of Poland began, the Nazis forced the city’s Jewish citizens into a “ghetto” surrounded by barbwire and armed SS guards. The Warsaw ghetto occupied an area of less than two square miles but soon held almost 500,000 Jews in deplorable conditions. Disease and starvation killed thousands every month, and beginning in July 1942, 6,000 Jews per day were transferred to the Treblinka concentration camp. Although the Nazis assured the remaining Jews that their relatives and friends were being sent to work camps, word soon reached the ghetto that deportation to the camp meant extermination. An underground resistance group was established in the ghetto—the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB)—and limited arms were acquired at great cost.

On January 18, 1943, when the Nazis entered the ghetto to prepare a group for transfer, a ZOB unit ambushed them. Fighting lasted for several days, and a number of Germans soldiers were killed before they withdrew. On April 19, Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler announced that the ghetto was to be emptied of its residents in honor of Hitler’s birthday the following day, and more than 1,000 S.S. soldiers entered the confines with tanks and heavy artillery. Although many of the ghetto’s remaining 60,000 Jewish dwellers attempted to hide themselves in secret bunkers, more than 1,000 ZOB members met the Germans with gunfire and homemade bombs. Suffering moderate casualties, the Germans initially withdrew but soon returned, and on April 24 launched an all-out attack against the Warsaw Jews.

Thousands were slaughtered as the Germans systematically progressed down the ghettos, blowing up the buildings one by one. The ZOB took to the sewers to continue the fight, but on May 8 their command bunker fell to the Germans and their resistant leaders died by suicide. By May 16, the ghetto was firmly under Nazi control, and mass deportation of the last Warsaw Jews to Treblinka began. During the uprising, some 300 German soldiers were killed, and thousands of Warsaw Jews were massacred. Virtually all those who survived the Uprising to reach Treblinka were dead by the end of the war.

An estimated 7,000 Jews perished during the Warsaw ghetto uprising, while nearly 50,000 others who survived were sent to extermination or labor camps. It’s believed that the Germans lost several hundred men in the uprising.

The Warsaw ghetto uprising was the largest, symbolically most important Jewish uprising, and the first urban uprising, in German-occupied Europe. The resistance in Warsaw inspired other uprisings in ghettos (e.g., Bialystok and Minsk) and killing centers (Treblinka and Sobibor).

 

[BarnBuster]

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[injinji]

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On April 18, 1906, at 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing an estimated 3,000 people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles.

San Francisco’s brick buildings and wooden Victorian structures were especially devastated. Fires immediately broke out and–because broken water mains prevented firefighters from stopping them–firestorms soon developed citywide. At 7 a.m., U.S. Army troops from Fort Mason reported to the Hall of Justice, and San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz called for the enforcement of a dusk-to-dawn curfew and authorized soldiers to shoot-to-kill anyone found looting. Meanwhile, in the face of significant aftershocks, firefighters and U.S. troops fought desperately to control the ongoing fire, often dynamiting whole city blocks to create firewalls. On April 20, 20,000 refugees trapped by the massive fire were evacuated from the foot of Van Ness Avenue onto the USS Chicago.

By April 23, most fires were extinguished, and authorities commenced the task of rebuilding the devastated metropolis. It was estimated that some 3,000 people died as a result of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and the devastating fires it inflicted upon the city. Almost 30,000 buildings were destroyed, including most of the city’s homes and nearly all the central business district.

I forget the Tom Robins book, but it was the one with the Indians who used acorns in a 13 hour hour glass. They were in the hills overlooking San Fran when the big earthquake hit. In the days and weeks afterword they could not understand why the white people didn't understand a sign from God when they saw one.

 

[BarnBuster]

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[BarnBuster]

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[ANC]

 

[injinji]

On this day, two days and a year ago, US oil traded in negative territory for the first time. (Picture Lucy at the candy factory)

The price of US oil has turned negative for the first time in history.
That means oil producers are paying buyers to take the commodity off their hands over fears that storage capacity could run out in May.
Demand for oil has all but dried up as lockdowns across the world have kept people inside.
As a result, oil firms have resorted to renting tankers to store the surplus supply and that has forced the price of US oil into negative territory.
The price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the benchmark for US oil, fell as low as minus $37.63 a barrel.

US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up

Coronavirus downturn has put major pressure on oil prices with demand slumping and storage running out.

www.bbc.com

 

[injinji]

View attachment 4883880 View attachment 4883871​

He was one of the good guys.

 

[raratt]

RIP Tempest.

Tempest Storm Dies: Burlesque Icon And Star Of Russ Meyer Films Was 93

Tempest Storm, the often-flame-haired striptease artist, burlesque performer, star of early Russ Meyer films and later a rock generation icon, died Tuesday in her Las Vegas apartment. She was 93. Her death was reported to the Las Vegas Review-Journal by Storm’s longtime friend and business...

www.yahoo.com

 

[BarnBuster]

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The massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I is commemorated each year on April 24.

Armenians refer to the mass killings as the Armenian genocide — a term that Turkey rejects and which the United States had for decades refrained from using. That changed Saturday, when President Biden recognized it as a “genocide” in an annual Remembrance Day declaration.

Historians estimate that around 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed during massacres and deportation campaigns carried out by the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915. Many use the word genocide to describe it.

Ankara has repeatedly warned Washington that changing its stance would threaten U.S.-Turkish relations and shared interests such as an agreement that allows the United States access to a military base in the south of the country.

Turkey frequently complains when other countries use the term genocide. Some 20 countries do, including France and Canada, while other key U.S. allies, including Israel and Britain, do not.

In 2019, Congress passed a resolution calling the killings a genocide. The move infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Trump officially rejected it.

Obama had pledged to formally recognize the Armenian genocide when he first ran in 2008, but by the end of his eight years in office, he had not done so.

Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, among others, did not use the word to avoid angering Turkey. Ankara is a longtime U.S. ally and a strategic NATO member, bordering Russia and the Middle East. More recently, it was part of the fight against the Islamic State.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/22/armenia-genocide-recognize-biden-turkey/

The United States and the (Non-)Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

The genocide of Ottoman Armenians, perpetrated from 1915 to 1917 by the Young Turk Ottoman authorities, has been recognized as an unquestionable fact by the large majority of the world academic and...

journals.openedition.org

Wars and casualties of the 20th and 21st Century

20th Century Genocides and Mass Atrocities

 

[injinji]

View attachment 4886617​

The massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I is commemorated each year on April 24.

Armenians refer to the mass killings as the Armenian genocide — a term that Turkey rejects and which the United States had for decades refrained from using. That changed Saturday, when President Biden recognized it as a “genocide” in an annual Remembrance Day declaration.

Historians estimate that around 1.5 million Armenian Christians were killed during massacres and deportation campaigns carried out by the Ottoman Empire beginning in 1915. Many use the word genocide to describe it.

Ankara has repeatedly warned Washington that changing its stance would threaten U.S.-Turkish relations and shared interests such as an agreement that allows the United States access to a military base in the south of the country.

Turkey frequently complains when other countries use the term genocide. Some 20 countries do, including France and Canada, while other key U.S. allies, including Israel and Britain, do not.

In 2019, Congress passed a resolution calling the killings a genocide. The move infuriated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Trump officially rejected it.

Obama had pledged to formally recognize the Armenian genocide when he first ran in 2008, but by the end of his eight years in office, he had not done so.

Former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, among others, did not use the word to avoid angering Turkey. Ankara is a longtime U.S. ally and a strategic NATO member, bordering Russia and the Middle East. More recently, it was part of the fight against the Islamic State.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/04/22/armenia-genocide-recognize-biden-turkey/

The United States and the (Non-)Recognition of the Armenian Genocide

The genocide of Ottoman Armenians, perpetrated from 1915 to 1917 by the Young Turk Ottoman authorities, has been recognized as an unquestionable fact by the large majority of the world academic and...

journals.openedition.org

Wars and casualties of the 20th and 21st Century

20th Century Genocides and Mass Atrocities

Joe Rob stirred the pot today by calling a spade a spade.

 

[BarnBuster]

​

On April 25, 2014 officials from Flint, Michigan switched the city’s water supply to the Flint River as a cost-cutting measure for the struggling city. In doing so, they unwittingly introduced lead-poisoned water into homes, in what would become a massive public-health crisis.

The problem started when officials decided to switch the water supply from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department to the Karegnondi Water Authority to save money for the economically struggling city. Before that connection could be built, the city turned to the Flint River as a temporary water source. By May, residents were complaining that the brown water flowing into their homes looked and smelled weird, but the largely majority-African American and poor citizens went ignored by officials. In August, E.coli and coliform bacteria were detected in Flint’s water.

From there, a leaked memo from the Environmental Protection Agency, and several independent studies, warned of dangerous levels of lead in the water. Although the city switched their water supply back in October 2015, the damage to the pipes had already been done. After months of denial and dodging, the mayor, governor and president declared a state of emergency in Flint. Free water bottles and filters were provided to residents to help them cope.

Unfortunately, the crisis didn’t end there for Flint residents. Over a year later, people were still using bottled water to cook, drink and even brush their teeth. The city’s recovery has been slow, as it works to replace 30,000 lead pipes. In 2017, reports showed that the water in most homes was generally safe, but many residents still don’t trust what comes out of their tap.

In the aftermath, residents filed a class-action lawsuit, and nine officials—including then Michigan Governor Rick Snyder—were charged with 34 felony counts and seven misdemeanors.

 

[lokie]

There is only one continental landmass on Earth named after a real person, the Americas, which honours the Florentine-Spanish explorer and cosmographer Amerigo Vespucci. It can also be said to be the first continent that came to European knowledge and was named on well-defined dates. The short version of the story is that it was Vespucci who first realised, on 17 August 1501, that present-day Brazil was not part of Asia but a New World, and that the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller named the new continent of America after him in a map published on 25 April 1507. However, the long version is more complicated, and tells us that the name America is actually the product of some error, a little ignorance and a fair amount of fantasy.

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/leading-figures/amerigo-vespucci-cosmographer-gave-name-to-americas/

 

[injinji]

View attachment 4887091

There is only one continental landmass on Earth named after a real person, the Americas, which honours the Florentine-Spanish explorer and cosmographer Amerigo Vespucci. It can also be said to be the first continent that came to European knowledge and was named on well-defined dates. The short version of the story is that it was Vespucci who first realised, on 17 August 1501, that present-day Brazil was not part of Asia but a New World, and that the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller named the new continent of America after him in a map published on 25 April 1507. However, the long version is more complicated, and tells us that the name America is actually the product of some error, a little ignorance and a fair amount of fantasy.

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/science/leading-figures/amerigo-vespucci-cosmographer-gave-name-to-americas/

View attachment 4887092

I'm a sucker for old maps, globes and atlases. My office is covered with reproduction maps, with globes on every flat surface and the bookshelves full of atlases. My oldest globe has all the African colonies on it. And one I dated at 1973-4. (using a west african country that was only there a couple of years)

 

[BarnBuster]

I'm a sucker for old maps, globes and atlases. My office is covered with reproduction maps, with globes on every flat surface and the bookshelves full of atlases. My oldest globe has all the African colonies on it. And one I dated at 1973-4. (using a west african country that was only there a couple of years)

This place has old NatGeo maps. I got a bunch of them when I started reading about WW2. Pretty reasonable too.

Pastpaper.com - Crinkley Bottom Books

 

[BarnBuster]

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On April 26, 1986, the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union. Thirty-two people died and dozens more suffered radiation burns in the opening days of the crisis, but only after Swedish authorities reported the fallout did Soviet authorities reluctantly admit that an accident had occurred.

The Chernobyl station was situated at the settlement of Pripyat, about 65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine. Built in the late 1970s on the banks of the Pripyat River, Chernobyl had four reactors, each capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of electric power. On the evening of April 25, 1986, a group of engineers began an electrical-engineering experiment on the Number 4 reactor. The engineers, who had little knowledge of reactor physics, wanted to see if the reactor’s turbine could run emergency water pumps on inertial power.

As part of their poorly designed experiment, the engineers disconnected the reactor’s emergency safety systems and its power-regulating system. Next, they compounded this recklessness with a series of mistakes: They ran the reactor at a power level so low that the reaction became unstable, and then removed too many of the reactor’s control rods in an attempt to power it up again. The reactor’s output rose to more than 200 megawatts but was proving increasingly difficult to control. Nevertheless, at 1:23 a.m. on April 26, the engineers continued with their experiment and shut down the turbine engine to see if its inertial spinning would power the reactor’s water pumps. In fact, it did not adequately power the water pumps, and without cooling water the power level in the reactor surged.

To prevent meltdown, the operators reinserted all the 200-some control rods into the reactor at once. The control rods were meant to reduce the reaction but had a design flaw: graphite tips. So, before the control rod’s five meters of absorbent material could penetrate the core, 200 graphite tips simultaneously entered, thus facilitating the reaction and causing an explosion that blew off the heavy steel and concrete lid of the reactor. It was not a nuclear explosion, as nuclear power plants are incapable of producing such a reaction, but was chemical, driven by the ignition of gases and steam that were generated by the runaway reaction. In the explosion and ensuing fire, more than 50 tons of radioactive material were released into the atmosphere, where it was carried by air currents.

On April 27, Soviet authorities began an evacuation of the 30,000 inhabitants of Pripyat. A cover-up was attempted, but on April 28 Swedish radiation monitoring stations, more than 800 miles to the northwest of Chernobyl, reported radiation levels 40 percent higher than normal. Later that day, the Soviet news agency acknowledged that a major nuclear accident had occurred at Chernobyl.

In the opening days of the crisis, 32 people died at Chernobyl and dozens more suffered radiation burns. The radiation that escaped into the atmosphere, which was several times that produced by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was spread by the wind over Northern and Eastern Europe, contaminating millions of acres of forest and farmland. An estimated 5,000 Soviet citizens eventually died from cancer and other radiation-induced illnesses caused by their exposure to the Chernobyl radiation, and millions more had their health adversely affected. In 2000, the last working reactors at Chernobyl were shut down and the plant was officially closed.

The true toll of the Chernobyl disaster

Covered up by a secretive Soviet Union at the time, the true number of deaths and illnesses caused by the nuclear accident are only now becoming clear.

www.bbc.com

.

 

[BarnBuster]

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On April 30, 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes reports on abuse of prisoners by American military forces at Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq. The report, which featured graphic photographs showing U.S. military personnel torturing and abusing prisoners, shocked the American public and greatly tarnished the Bush Administration and its war in Iraq.

Amnesty International had surfaced many of the allegations in June of 2003, not long after the United States invaded Iraq and took over Abu Ghraib, which soon became the largest American prison in Iraq. As the 60 Minutes report and subsequent investigations proved, torture quickly became commonplace at Abu Ghraib. Photographs depicted American soldiers sexually assaulting detainees, threatening them with dogs, putting them on leashes and engaging in a number of other practices that clearly constituted torture and/or violations of the Geneva Convention.

In at least one instance, the Army tortured a prisoner to death. President George W. Bush assured the public that the instances of torture were isolated, but as the scandal unfolded it became clear that, in the words of an International Committee of the Red Cross official, there was a “pattern and a broad system” of abuse throughout the Department of Defense. Torture techniques, which the CIA and military often referred to as “enhanced interrogation,” had in fact been developed at sites like the Guantanamo Bay detention center and were routinely employed in Iraq, at Guantanamo, and at other “black sites” around the world.

In June of 2004, it was revealed that the Bush Administration—specifically Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo—had not only been aware of widespread torture but had secretly developed a legal defense attempting to exempt the United States from the Geneva Convention. A 2006 court decision subsequently ruled that the Geneva Convention did apply to all aspects of the “War on Terror.”

Eleven soldiers were eventually convicted by military courts of crimes committed at Abu Ghraib, while Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge there, was merely demoted. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the abuses, but Bush did not accept Rumsfeld’s offer to resign. Yoo went on to teach at Berkeley Law and is a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In the years after the revelations, legal scholars have repeatedly suggested that Bush, Rumsfeld and soldiers who carried out the abuses at Abu Ghraib could be prosecuted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

 

[raratt]

RIP Johnny.

Johnny Crawford, ‘The Rifleman’ Star, Dead at 75

Actor Johnny Crawford, known for playing Chuck Connors’ son in ABC series “The Rifleman” from 1958-63, has died. He was 75. “It is with great sadness and heaviness of heart that the Johnny Crawford Legacy team announce the passing of Johnny Crawford,” it was posted on the Johnny Crawford Legacy...

www.yahoo.com

 

[BarnBuster]

RIP Johnny.

Johnny Crawford, ‘The Rifleman’ Star, Dead at 75

Actor Johnny Crawford, known for playing Chuck Connors’ son in ABC series “The Rifleman” from 1958-63, has died. He was 75. “It is with great sadness and heaviness of heart that the Johnny Crawford Legacy team announce the passing of Johnny Crawford,” it was posted on the Johnny Crawford Legacy...

www.yahoo.com

I loved "The Rifleman". About that time they had a toy cap gun rifle that I begged and pleaded for and finally got one for Christmas. Smacked myself right in the mouth first time I tried to twirl that fucker.

 

[injinji]

View attachment 4890838 View attachment 4890840​

On April 30, 2004, the CBS program 60 Minutes reports on abuse of prisoners by American military forces at Abu Ghraib, a prison in Iraq. The report, which featured graphic photographs showing U.S. military personnel torturing and abusing prisoners, shocked the American public and greatly tarnished the Bush Administration and its war in Iraq.

Amnesty International had surfaced many of the allegations in June of 2003, not long after the United States invaded Iraq and took over Abu Ghraib, which soon became the largest American prison in Iraq. As the 60 Minutes report and subsequent investigations proved, torture quickly became commonplace at Abu Ghraib. Photographs depicted American soldiers sexually assaulting detainees, threatening them with dogs, putting them on leashes and engaging in a number of other practices that clearly constituted torture and/or violations of the Geneva Convention.

In at least one instance, the Army tortured a prisoner to death. President George W. Bush assured the public that the instances of torture were isolated, but as the scandal unfolded it became clear that, in the words of an International Committee of the Red Cross official, there was a “pattern and a broad system” of abuse throughout the Department of Defense. Torture techniques, which the CIA and military often referred to as “enhanced interrogation,” had in fact been developed at sites like the Guantanamo Bay detention center and were routinely employed in Iraq, at Guantanamo, and at other “black sites” around the world.

In June of 2004, it was revealed that the Bush Administration—specifically Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo—had not only been aware of widespread torture but had secretly developed a legal defense attempting to exempt the United States from the Geneva Convention. A 2006 court decision subsequently ruled that the Geneva Convention did apply to all aspects of the “War on Terror.”

Eleven soldiers were eventually convicted by military courts of crimes committed at Abu Ghraib, while Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge there, was merely demoted. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the abuses, but Bush did not accept Rumsfeld’s offer to resign. Yoo went on to teach at Berkeley Law and is a Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In the years after the revelations, legal scholars have repeatedly suggested that Bush, Rumsfeld and soldiers who carried out the abuses at Abu Ghraib could be prosecuted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The only good thing about this was that it happened after Daddy had died. He spent 6 months in a German POW camp. He only spoke of it a few months before he died. The dogs were the worst part he said. (as kids we were not allowed German Shepherds. I didn't really connect this until years later) The picture of prisoners being threatened by dogs really shook me.