1. TRAGIC NEWS IN GERMANY IN JANUARY, 1945,
THE SINKING OF THE NAZI VESSEL WILHELM
GUSTLOFF WITH THE LOSS OF ABOUT 8000
LIVES, WAS THE WORST SINGLE SHIP DISASTER
IN HISTORY (I PREVIOUSLY WROTE ABOUT
THIS INCIDENT). BUT AN EVEN BIGGER STORY
FOR GERMANY, THEN IN THE FINAL DAYS OF
ENDURING 12 YEARS OF NAZI BARBARISM AND
TYRANNY, WAS THAT MORE THAN ONE
MILLION GERMANS CIVILIANS AND SOLDIERS
WERE EVACUATED FROM EAST PRUSSIA (NOW
POLAND). "Operation Hannibal"was the largest short-term
military evacuation by sea in history, dwarfing the more
celebrated British evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940. It rescued
these ethnic Germans from advancing Soviet troops bent
on revenge for the atrocities committed by the Nazi armies
in Russia. However, once back in Germany, many of these
refugees and soldiers were swept up in the chaos of the
end of the war, and did not fare well.
[Further reading: Death in the Baltic by Catherine J. Prince]
2. GAVRILO PRINCIP, WHO ASSASSINATED
ARCHDUKE FRANZ FERDINAND IN SARAJEVO IN
1914, AN ACT WHICH DIRECTLY CAUSED WORLD
WAR I, WAS NOT EXECUTED BUT DIED OF
PNEUMONIA IN CAPTIVITY IN THERESIENSTAT
PRISON IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA IN APRIL, 1918.
In one of history’s cruelest ironies, Theresienstat
became one of the most notorious concentration
camps of the Holocaust of World War II --- the war
and the Holocaust. having led directly from World
War I. (An added irony is that Princip’s first name
is Serbo-Croatian for the Hebrew name for “Gabriel”
which means “”messenger of the Lord.”
3. CRIMEA, NOW A CRISIS POINT BETWEEN
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE, WAS MORE THAN 1000
YEARS AGO PART OF A JEWISH KINGDOM.
The Khazars were an Asian Turkic people who in
the 4th century A.D. conquered the area north of
the Black Sea, including the Crimean peninsula.
Grown rich from taxing the silk caravans that
passed through Khazar lands, the kingdom became
powerful and very rich. In the 8th century, the king
and the Khazar elites converted to Judaism,
although there are conflicting stories about why and
how it happened. Jewish rule was relatively brief,
but it is an amazing story considering the
subsequent tragic history of the Jews in the same
place a thousand years later.
4. ONE OF THE OLDEST ETHNIC GROUPS IN
EUROPE HAS NOT EVER HAD THEIR OWN
NATION. THE RUSYNS (OR CARPATHO-RUSYNS)
SPEAK THEIR OWN LANGUAGE, AND HAVE A
DISTINCT RELIGIOUS AND CULTURAL
HERITAGE. An ancient people who have lived in
the area around the Carpathian Mountains in
central Europe for the past thousand years, the
Rusyn lands have been part of Russia, Ukraine,
Austro-Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Romania.
In 1919, after World War I, various Rusyn leaders
traveled to the Versailles Conference in Paris to
plead for their own nation, but were denied. Today,
many of the 4 million Rusyns live in the U.S.
[Further reading: The People From Nowhere by
Robert Magocsi]
5. ONE OF THE VERY FEW NATIVE FOODS OF THE
AMERICAN MIDWEST RECOGNIZED GLOBALLY
AS A GOURMET DISH, MINNESOTA WILD RICE,
IS NOT A MEMBER OF THE RICE FAMILY BUT IS
A GRASS. There are four kinds of true wild rice.
The most well-known is native to the northern
prairies, including especially northern Minnesota.
Other varieties are native to eastern U.S., Texas
and China, and varieties have been transplanted to
California, but the primary commercial crop is
from Minnesota.
6. THE MOST CELEBRATED SPY OF WORLD WAR II
WAS A CATALAN WHO HAD TO SIGN UP FIRST AS
A NAZI AGENT IN ORDER TO BE CONSIDERED
BY BRITISH INTELLIGENCE AS THEIR DOUBLE
AGENT. Juan Pujols, known universally by the cover
name “Garbo,” devised and implemented the
greatest military deception in modern history by
fooling Hitler and the German Wehrmacht to think
the primary Allied invasion of Europe in 1944 would
be at Calais and not at Normandy. Even three
months after D-Day, “Garbo” persuaded the Nazis
to hold vital divisions at Calais, waiting for an
imaginary army invasion that did not come, and
many consider Garbo’s efforts was a vital part of
D-Day’s ultimate success.
[Further reading: Agent Garbo by Steven Talty]
7. THE FIRST SCIENTIST TO CONCEIVE THE
THERMONUCLEAR REACTION IN HYDROGEN,
A DISCOVERY THAT LED DIRECTLY TO THE
H-BOMB, WAS NOT AN AMERICAN, NOR A
GERMAN NOR ANY EUROPEAN. The first physicist
to do so was, ironically, the Japanese physicist
Togutaru Hagiwara who revealed his discovery at
lecture in Kyoto in May 1941, seven months before
Pearl Harbor. Although the first H-bomb was not
exploded until 1954, Hagiwara was also a pioneer
in the theories which led to the first A-bomb
exploded over Hiroshima in August, 1945’
[Further reading: The Making of the Atomic Bomb by
Richard Rhodes]
8. ARAMAIC WAS THE ACTUAL LANGUAGE OF THE
OLD TESTAMENT. Although Hebrew and Arabic are
today derived from it, it is still a living language for
about two million Assyrians, a Christian people who
live in Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq where they have
faced persecution for centuries. (A senior member of
the U.S. house of representatives, Anna Eshoo of
California, is the only Assyrian-American in
Congress.
9. KING FAROUK OF EGYPT, WHO WAS OUSTED
FROM POWER BY THE EGYPTIAN MILITARY
IN 1952, THE SAME GROUP NOW IN CONTROL
IN THAT COUNTRY, WAS ONE OF THE WORLD’S
FOREMOST NUMISMATISTS OR COIN
COLLECTORS. His fabled collection included at
least one of the most valuable coins ever issued by
the U.S. Mint, the 1913 “Liberty” nickel (one sold for
$5 million in 2007) He also owned an “unofficial” 1933
U.S. gold double eagle that sold at auction for the highest
price for any coin in history, $7.4 million.
10.WHEN THE U.S. DOLLAR WAS CONVERTIBLE TO
GOLD, THE PRICE OF GOLD WAS $35 AN OUNCE,
AND LATER, $42 AN OUNCE AND THEN $44 AN
OUNCE. From 1933 until recently, the U.S. Mint did
not issue gold coins, and they were not legal tender.
Nevertheless, gold coins have been bought and sold
on the collector’s market throughout the nation’s
history. In 1971, the U.S. ended converting dollars
into gold. At that time, common dates of twenty
dollar gold pieces were routinely bought and sold
for under $50 each (There was almost exactly one
ounce of gold in those “double eagles”). When gold
reached its all-time peak in 2011, those same gold
pieces traded at about $1900 each. Today the price of
gold is about $1200 per ounce. (Gold coins of all
denominations which have numismatic value can
exceed the official price by significant amounts --- as
can be noted in the previous “amazing” fact of
history.)
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Copyright (c) 2014 by Barry Casselman. All rights reserved.
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