KNOW YOUR BEST( PRESENT AND PAST HISTORY)

It serves as a reminder of the importance of working to prevent conflicts and protect civilians in times of conflict. It is also a testament to the resilience and strength of the human spirit, as many survivors of the massacre were able to rebuild their lives and move forward despite the unimaginable horrors they had experienced. The Nanking Massacre, also known as the Nanjing Massacre, was a horrific event that took place in the Chinese city of Nanjing in December 1937, during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the Japanese Imperial Army invaded and captured the city, they carried out a campaign of mass murder, rape, and destruction that lasted for several weeks. It is estimated that as many as 300,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war were killed during this time. The Nanking Massacre is a tragic example of the suffering that can be inflicted on a defeated or weak country during times of war. The Chinese had been fighting the Japanese for several years and were already weaken

  Janet Horne, accused of witchcraft, she was brutally beaten and stoned and was the last person to execute legally for witchcraft in the British Isles. "The last documented European witchcraft execution was in 1895.You've been beating yourself up inside your own head about not stepping fully forward as a woman in today's "free" society, not getting your voice ALL the way out, making as BIG an impact as you could. Take this in for just a moment.  Women have been stoned, banished, disowned, beheaded and for speaking up and being visible.  That’s right, literally burned alive while tied to a wooden stake with rope. Yes.  Janet Horne, accused of witchcraft, died in 1727 as the last person to be executed legally for witchcraft in the British Isles. Barbara Zdunk was burned to death for witchcraft in 1811 in Prussia, todays Poland;  Maria Renata Saenger von Mossau was one of the last to be executed for witchcraft in Germany in 1749;  Catherine Repond was strangled and

  Early on the morning of Jan. 31, 1968, as Vietnamese celebrated the Lunar New Year, or Tet as it is known locally, Communist forces launched a wave of coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam. The campaign — one of the largest of the Vietnam War — led to intense fighting and heavy casualties in cities and towns across the South. While battles raged for more than a month in some places like the city of Hue, the Tet Offensive was from a strictly military standpoint a defeat for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. Yet the campaign had a profound impact on the U.S. war effort, stunning leaders in Washington and leaving Americans questioning their country’s involvement in the overseas campaign. Fifty years after their original publication, The Associated Press is making available four stories from Jan. 31, Feb. 2 and Feb. 21, 1968, written by AP journalists Peter Arnett, Edwin Q. White and John Lengel documenting the offensive. The package includes a Pulitzer Prize-winning

  The heretic's fork was a torture device that consisted of a metal piece with two opposing bi-pronged forks attached to a strap. The forks were typically around 8 inches in length and were sharpened to a point. One end of the device was pushed under the victim's chin, while the other went against the sternum. The victim was then hung from the ceiling, and the strap was used to secure the heretic fork around the neck of the victim. The purpose of the heretic's fork was to extract confessions from accused heretics and other religious dissidents during the Spanish Inquisition. This was a period of intense religious persecution and violence in the 15th and 16th centuries, during which the Catholic Church sought to root out and eliminate any perceived threats to its authority. The heretic's fork was considered a particularly cruel and inhumane form of torture, as it caused intense pain and could lead to potentially fatal injuries. When a victim was hung from the heretic&

 In early October of 1660, the diarist Samuel Pepys got up in the morning and headed out to Charing Cross to spend a pleasant day with friends and to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered; which was done there, he looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy.  It is said, that he said that he was sure to come shortly at the right hand of Christ to judge them that now had judged him; and that his wife do expect his coming again. Thus it was my chance to see the King beheaded at White Hall, and to see the first blood shed in revenge for the blood of the King at Charing Cross. From thence to my Lord’s, and took Captain Cuttance and Mr. Sheply to the Sun Tavern, and did give them some oysters. I think one of the hardest things for the 21st century to understand about earlier eras is how it was possible for perfectly normal people to go see a man

 A popular form of punishment in China was a device called the Pillory. This cruel device was used right up to the start of the 20th century. Two pieces of wood were fastened around the neck and sealed with padlocks. The Pillory was designed to humiliate the person wearing it with the offender’s crimes plastered all over the board for everyone to see. The size and the weight of the Pillory depended on the severity of your crime. The weight of the device could reach 200 pounds which would cause immense pain and crippling deformities if you were left in one long enough. On top of the humiliation, the board was wide enough so you couldn’t reach your mouth and relied on strangers for food and water.Another variation of the Pillory was the cage. The Pillory was placed in a cage in such a way the prisoner’s feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Supports would be placed under the feet to help alleviate pressure on the neck. These supports would then be gradually taken away until the prisoner slowly

Major General Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin and his execution companions carried out numerous atrocious mass executions during The Geat Purge and World War II Major General Vasily Mikhailovich Blokhin and his execution companions carried out numerous atrocious mass executions during The Geat Purge and World War II. Blokhin served as the chief executioner of the NKVD during Stalins reign. He was personally chosen by Stalin already in 1926. Executing thousands of prisoners by his own hand, his most notable mass murder took place during the Katýn Massacre in 1940 in 5 March, where he personally executed around 7,000 Polish prisoners. The total amount of deaths during the massacre reached up to over 20,000. The prisoners consisted of military personnel taken as POWs during the invasion of Poland in 1939, police officers, landowners, factory owners, saboteurs, lawyers, officials, priests and intelligentsia.  Blokhin is said to have murdered 300 people per night with his own effective sys

  77 years ago, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz – the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp. The weakest and the sickest prisoners remained there, who could not take part in the evacuations to the west organized by the SS, the so-called death marches. It was not the end of their suffering – they needed medical attention and convalescence. Jewish children in the liberated Auschwitz camp. A still from a Soviet film by Aleksander Vorontsov, which was shot from January 28, 1945. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “And at some point in the distance we noticed the silhouettes of white-clad men who were walking towards the camp. We were not sure who these men were, and we even feared that it might be the Germans who wanted to eliminate us. (...) Immediately there were shouts of «zdravstvuytye tovarishchi» [hello comrades]. The Soviet soldiers told us not to be afraid, because «germantsov net» [Germans are gone]”, recalled a former Polish prisoner, Wanda Dramińska. On Janua

 He was hanged on that day following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews were murdered. 1947,The execution of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss(1900-1947) a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.  Höss introduced pesticide Zyklon B containing hydrogen cyanide to the killing process.  He was hanged in 1947 following a trial before the Polish Supreme National Tribunal. In his affidavit made at Nuremberg on 5 April 1946 Höss stated: "I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead.  This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having

  On August 17th, 1862, The Sioux Uprising began in Minnesota, which resulted in more than 800 white settlers dead. It started when four young Sioux murdered five white settlers at Acton. The Santee Sioux, who lived on a long, narrow reservation on the south side of the Minnesota River, were reacting to broken government promises and corrupt Indian agents. A military court sentenced 303 Sioux to die, but President Abraham Lincoln reduced the list to 38.  They were to be hanged at Mankato, Minnesota on December the 26th 1862.   The St. Paul Pioneer Press account of the execution "On Wednesday each Indian set apart for execution was permitted to send for two or three of his relatives or friends confined in the same prison for the purpose of bidding them a final adieu, and to carry such messages to absent relatives as each person might be disposed to send.  Major Brown was present during the interviews, and describes them as very sad and affecting. Each Indian had some word to send t

  Idi Amin, one of the most evil men to have lived on planet earth killed an estimated 500,000 Human beings. This blog is dedicated to honoring his victims. The bodies of most of Amin's victims were clandestinely disposed of or mutilated beyond recognition, never to be recovered by their families.  The vast majority of the victims are unidentifiable for this reason. If your loved one was liquidated put their details in any comments section. The man being stripped naked is Tom Masaba. Masaba was a former Uganda army captain who was executed by firing squad during Amin's regime. He was accused of being a FRONASA collaborator. FRONASA was the (Front for National Salvation). It was a rebel group headed by Yoweri Museveni in the 1970s. Tom Masaba was killed publicly in Mbale town in 1973. Tom Masaba is stripped naked before being publicly executed in 1973. The lifeless body of Masaba after the firing squad  RIP captain Tom Masaba.

  On February 25, 2016, a group of fishermen happened upon a seemingly abandoned yacht drifting off the coast of the Philippine island of Mindanao. But when they peered inside, they found something more startling than they could have ever imagined — the mummified body of a man, frozen in place right there in his chair. The body, soon identified as German adventurer Manfred Fritz Bajorat, was completely calcified in an eerie shade of grey, as if he was made of ash. Positioned right next to the boat's radio, Bajorat was believed to have been trying to make one last distress call when he died in the very spot where the fishermen later found him. To this day, no one knows exactly how long his body had been sitting there, slowly mummifying while his boat drifted at sea.

  While the Johnston was making its epic fight, Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland’s Samuel B. Roberts got into the fight. The Sammy B was a Butler class destroyer escort. She was armed with 2 5 inch as opposed to the 5 5 inch guns on the destroyers. Instead of 10 she had 3 torpedoes.  It was intended as an antisubmarine platform but it would sail into harm’s way like a battleship. Sizing up the situation he told his crew "This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can." With that announcement he turned to the attack. Dodging from smoke screen to smoke screen he launched his torpedoes at the cruiser Chokai at 4,000 yards. He turned away and headed back to cover the carriers.  One torpedo hit and the Chokai rapidly lost speed and fell out of column. At 0810- as he neared the carrier formation he observed the heavy cruiser Chikuma firing into the carriers. Roberts charged at the larger vessel, rapidly fi

  Vipers are critically important components of the ecological communities from which they come.  For a balanced and healthy wildlife community, these snakes need to be present. Further, they often feed on rodents, which can be associated with a wide variety of human pathogens.  Vipers may well serve as components of a control mechanism of rodent populations.  By consuming rodents, and the parasites on them, vipers may also be part of a control mechanism of tick-vectored illnesses, including lyme disease. Many more people are sickened/killed every year by diseases associated with rodents, and the parasites that feed on them/spread disease, than are injured or killed by venomous snakes in the US annually.  Lyme disease alone inflicts over 300,000 people in the US per year.  Rodents often serve as hosts for the bacterium.  For example, forty to ninety percent of white-footed mice in a given population carry the bacterium that causes lyme disease (Borrelia burgdorferi).  Many of the ticks

After his historic voyage in 1492, Columbus made three more journeys to the Americas. However, his later expeditions were marred by challenges and complaints. Settlers accused Columbus of mismanagement, favoritism, and imposing harsh labor requirements. They claimed that he neglected their needs and concerns while granting privileges and positions to his own circle of associates. Additionally, there were allegations of mistreatment and exploitation of the indigenous populations. The encomienda system, implemented by Columbus, allowed Spanish settlers to demand tribute and forced labor from the indigenous communities This led to widespread abuses, including the enslavement and mistreatment of indigenous people. Reports of violence, forced labor, and inadequate provisions under Columbus's rule contributed to the complaints against him. Furthermore, there were concerns regarding Columbus's accumulation of wealth and personal trading ventures.  Some settlers accused him of m

  The Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces occupied Serbia from late 1915 until the end of World War I. Austria-Hungary's declaration of war against Serbia on 28 July 1914 marked the beginning of the war.  After three unsuccessful Austro-Hungarian offensives between August and December 1914, a combined Austro-Hungarian and German offensive breached the Serbian front from the north and west in October 1915, while Bulgaria attacked from the east. By January 1916, all of Serbia had been occupied by the Central Powers. Serbia was divided into two separate occupation zones, one Bulgarian and the other Austro-Hungarian, both governed under a military administration. Germany declined to directly annex any Serbian territory and instead took control of railways, mines, and forestry and agricultural resources in both occupied zones.  The Austro-Hungarian occupation zone covered the northern three-quarters of Serbia. It was ruled by the Military General Governorate, an administration set up by the A

  In the early hours of Dec. 16, 1944, Adolf Hitler's army launched a massive surprise attack on Allied lines across the frozen, forested landscape of Belgium. Caught off-guard, the Americans fell back into defensive positions. For a few desperate days before Christmas, the outcome of the war in Europe hung in the balance.   Desperate battles to stem the German advance were fought at St.-Vith, Elsenborn Ridge, Houffalize and Bastogne. As the Germans drove deeper into the Ardennes in an attempt to secure vital bridgeheads, the Allied line took on the appearance of a large bulge, giving rise to the battle's name: Battle of the Bulge. The brutality rivaled that of the Eastern Front; no quarter was given. Incidents like the Malmedy Massacre became well-known. On the afternoon of December 17, 1944, over 80 GIs who had been taken prisoner were gunned down by men of the 1st SS Panzer Division. Some escaped to spread the story, which led to a steely resolve on the part of American troo

ephants are one of the smartest and most powerful animals in the world. It is no wonder then that these magnificent beasts were exploited and trained to be brutal executioners.  Death by elephant is a form of capital punishment that has been used for at least 2,000 years, particularly in India, but also in other parts of South and Southeast Asia. Execution by elephant was brutal and terrifying. In India, where this form of capital punishment was known as  gunga rao  , the accused was crushed to death with brute force. But death was not always swift. were under the constant control of a  mahout  (elephant trainer), who forced the animal, through the use of a sharp metal hook, to carry out their commands. Under the control of a mahout, elephants could inflict a slow and torturous death by crushing the convicted person’s limbs one by one and tossing them about the ground, dragging them, or stabbing them with their tusks, before finishing them off by crushing their skull. In neighboring S

 Brigadier General James Stewart became the first major American movie star to enlist in the United States Army to fight in World War II. After first being rejected for low weight in Nov, 1940, he successfully enlisted in Feb, 1941. As an experienced amateur pilot, he reported for induction as a private in the Air Corps on Mar 22, 1941.  Soon to be 33 years old, he was over the age limit for Aviation Cadet training—the normal path of commissioning for pilots, navigators and bombardiers—and therefore applied for an Air Corps commission as both a college graduate and a licensed commercial pilot. Stewart received his commission as a second lieutenant on Jan 1, 1942. He appealed to his commander and was sent to England as part of the 445th Bombardment Group to pilot a B-24 Liberator, in Nov 1943, and was based initially at RAF Tibenham before moving to RAF Old Buckenham. He was promoted to major following a mission to Ludwigshafen, Germany, on Jan 7, 1944.  He was awarded the Distinguished

 During the 18th and 19th centuries, it came to be seen as unnatural to be able to watch someone executed, but that has never stopped some people from watching when given the opportunity, and it probably never will.  Executions have always attracted people from all backgrounds: men, women, and children; rich and poor; academic and illiterate.  Individual responses may differ—some will laugh and jeer, others will studiously take notes, some will faint or vomit or cry—and to an extent these responses are culturally determined, but the lesson of history is that it is within our capacity as humans to witness decapitations and other forms of execution and, more than that, to enjoy them as popular public events. For as long as there were public executions, there were crowds to see them. In London in the early 19th century, there might have been 5,000 to watch a standard hanging, but crowds of up to 100,000 came to see a famous felon killed. The numbers hardly changed over the years. An estim

On August 6, 1890,  New York  executed  William Kemmler . It was the first time ever a state used the  electric chair  to carry out an execution. Proponents of electrocution - including  Thomas Edison  - touted the new method as quick, effective, painless, and humane:  the same arguments later used by legislators to support lethal injection and execution by nitrogen gas. In May 1890, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Kemmler’s challenge that the electric chair was cruel and unusual punishment. “Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death,” the Court wrote. But it said the New York legislature in enacting the electric chair statute had intended “to devise a more humane method” of execution and “presume[d] that the legislature was possessed of the facts upon which it took action.” The execution proceeded. According to the Buffalo News, Kemmler - who was intellectually disabled - asked corrections officers: “Don’t let them experiment on me more than they ought to

  After Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Tragedy and Humiliation.U.S. and Australian brutalisation of women on the Japanese mainland.   (Excerpt From Pages 66-69) All references are provided in the book itself.  “There was a far darker side to the U.S. and allied occupation of Japan, one which is little mentioned in the vast majority of histories – American or otherwise. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, mass rapes by occupying forces were expected… [despite setting up of a comfort women which recruited or otherwise trafficked desperate women to brothels] such crimes were still common and several of them were extremely brutal and resulted in the deaths of the victims. Political science professor Eiji Takemae wrote regard- ing the conduct of American soldiers occupying Japan: ‘U.S. troops comported themselves like conquerors, especially in the early weeks and months of occupation. Misbehavior ranged from black-marketeering, petty theft, reckless driving and disorderly conduct to vandalism,