Category: News

On This Day in History: April 29

On this day in 1945, Dachau was liberated by American troops of the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division, headed by Gen, George Patton, and subdivision of the camp by the 42nd Rainbow Division. There were 123 sub-camps and factories in the vicinity of the town.

Dachau was the first concentration camp opened by the Nazi regime in 1933 on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory less than 10 miles northeast of Munich. The camp was established 5 weeks after Adolf Hitler took power as chancellor and was used to house political prisoners, In 1938, the camp was primarily occupied by Jews. The camp served as a training center for the SS guards at other camps, medical experiments and forced labor.

Thousands of inmates died or were executed at Dachau, and thousands more were transferred to a Nazi extermination center near Linz, Austria, when they became too sick or weak to work. In 1944, to increase war production, the main camp was supplemented by dozens of satellite camps established near armaments factories in southern Germany and Austria. These camps were administered by the main camp and collectively called Dachau.

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As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated. Some of the American troops who liberated Dachau were so appalled by conditions at the camp that they machine-gunned at least two groups of captured German guards. It is officially reported that 30 SS guards were killed in this fashion, but conspiracy theorists have alleged that more than 10 times that number were executed by the American liberators. The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp.

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1 Pressure mounts on Germany to aid Greece

by Simon Sturdee, AFP

2 hrs 40 mins ago

BERLIN (AFP) – Pressure piled on Germany to stop stalling a package to rescue Greece from crippling debts Wednesday as the International Monetary Fund warned confidence in the whole eurozone was on the line.

The euro hit a one-year dollar low with a downgrade of Spain’s credit rating accelerating its fall, escalating fears that the Greek debt crisis is spreading across Europe a day after Greek debt was slashed to junk status.

Greece meanwhile acted to stop speculators operating on the Athens stock exchange as the interest rate it has to pay to borrow money hit 11.1 percent, only trailing Pakistan and Venezuela in the world’s highest interest payers.

Worth reading.

But with the General Workers Confederation announcing a general strike for May 5 against “neo-liberal blackmail”, his government is still holding out against proposals by the EU and IMF to cut salaries.

“We have been asked for a cut which we do not accept,” Labour Minister Andreas Loverdos said.

On This Day in History: April 28

On this day, two events occurred involving the South Pacific. Separated by 158 years, one was a mutiny, the other a grand adventure.

Apr 28, 1789: Mutiny on the HMS Bounty Mutiny on the Bounty: The mutiny  was led by Fletcher Christian against the commanding officer, William Bligh. The sailors were attracted to the idyllic life on the Pacific island, and repelled by the alleged cruelty of their captain. Captain Bligh and 18 sailors were set a drift in the South Pacific, near the island of Tonga. Christian along with some of the mutineers and native Tahitians eventually settled on Pitcairn Island an uninhabited volcanic island about 1000 miles south of Tahiti. The mutineers who remained behind on Tahiti were eventually arrested and returned to England where three were hanged. The British never found Christian and the others. Captain Bligh and the 18 others eventually arrived in Timor.

Years later on 1808. am American whaling vessel discovered the colony of women and children led by the sole surviving mutineer, John Adams. The Bounty had been stripped and burned. Christian and the other 8 mutineers were dead. Adams was eventually granted amnesty and remained the patriarch of Pitcairn Island until his death in 1829.

1947 Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. His crew of six fellow Norwegians set sail from Peru on a raft constructed from balsa logs and other materials that were indigenous to the region at the time of the Spanish Conquistadors. After 101 days crossing over 400 miles they crashed into a reef at Raroia  in the Tuamotu Islands on August 7, 1947. Heyerdahl’s book, “The Kon-Tiki Expedition: By Raft Across the South Seas”, became a best seller, the documentary won an Academy Award in 1951. The original raft is on display in the Kon-Tiki Museum in Oslo. Heyerdahl died April 18, 2002 in Italy.

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1 Fears grow over oil spill off US coast

by Allen Johnson, AFP

Tue Apr 27, 10:47 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – The Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster will develop into one of the worst spills in US history if the well is not sealed, the coast guard officer leading the response warned.

BP, which leases the Deepwater Horizon platform, has been operating four robotic submarines some 1,500 meters (5,000 feet) down on the seabed to try to cap two leaks in the riser pipe that connected the rig to the wellhead.

But the best efforts of the British energy giant have yielded no progress so far, and engineers are frantically constructing a giant dome that could be placed over the leaks as a back-up plan to try and stop the oil spreading.

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1 Chaos in Ukraine parliament as Russia deal ratified

by Anya Tsukanova, AFP

2 hrs 19 mins ago

KIEV (AFP) – Ukraine’s parliament erupted into chaos on Tuesday as deputies scuffled and hurled smoke bombs during a tumultuous session that ratified a bitterly contested deal with Russia extending a naval base lease.

Despite the extraordinary scenes that saw parliament — the Verkhovna Rada — filled with smoke, lawmakers ratified the deal to extend the stay of the Russian Black Sea fleet until at least 2042, denounced by the opposition as a sell-out for Ukraine.

The uproar started when the parliament speaker, Volodymr Lytvyn, was pelted with a volley of a dozen eggs, forcing him to duck for cover behind black umbrellas held by two aides.

On This Day in History: April 27

On this day in 1805, Naval Agent to the Barbary States, William Eaton, the former consul to Tunis, led an small expeditionary force of Marines, commanded by First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon, and Berber mercenaries from Alexandria, across 500 miles to the port of Derna in Tripoli. Supported by US Naval gunfire, the port was captured by the end of the day, overthrowing Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States.

Lt. O’Bannon raised the US flag over the port, the first time the US flag had flown over a foreign battlefield. He had performed so valiantly that newly restored Pasha Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The words “To the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps official song commemorate the battle.

Sources:

History.com

On This Day

About.com  

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1 Subs sent to seal leaks as US oil slick spreads

by Allen Johnson, AFP

2 hrs 48 mins ago

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AFP) – Robotic submarines are on Monday racing to stop oil from a sunken rig streaming into the Gulf of Mexico, as BP warned that sealing the seabed leaks could take three months if the operation fails.

The British energy giant — which leases the stricken Deepwater Horizon semi-submersible platform — is desperately trying to prevent a massive slick from growing and spreading to Louisiana’s ecologically fragile coast.

Satellite images on Sunday showed the slick had spread by 50 percent in a day to cover an area of 600 square miles (1,550 square kilometers), although officials said almost all the oil was just a thin veneer on the sea’s surface.

Drill Baby Drill.

On This Day in History: April 26

Apr 26, 1954: Polio Vaccine Trials Begin

On this day in 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere.

Woman dies in iron lung after outage

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A woman who spent nearly 60 years of her life in an iron lung after being diagnosed with polio as a child died Wednesday after a power failure shut down the machine that kept her breathing, her family said.

Dianne Odell, 61, had been confined to the 7-foot-long machine since she was stricken by polio at 3 years old.

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Odell was afflicted with “bulbo-spinal” polio three years before a polio vaccine was discovered and largely stopped the spread of the crippling childhood disease.

She spent her life in the iron lung, cared for by her parents and other family members. Though confined inside the 750-pound apparatus, Odell managed to get a high school diploma, take college courses and write a children’s book.

The iron lung that she used was a cylindrical chamber with a seal at the neck. She lay on her back in the device with only her head exposed, and made eye contact with visitors using an angled mirror above her head. The lung worked by producing positive and negative pressure on the lungs that caused them to expand and contract so that she could breathe.

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1 Thai PM vows to retake Bangkok protest site

by Thanaporn Promyamyai, AFP

45 mins ago

BANGKOK (AFP) – Thailand’s embattled prime minister vowed to clear Bangkok’s commercial heart of anti-government Red Shirt protesters as he appeared on television Sunday in a show of unity with his army chief.

But Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva did not say when security forces would retake the Red Shirts’ vast protest site, occupied for three weeks and fortified with barricades made from truck tyres and sharpened bamboo poles.

Adding to the tension, the rival Yellow Shirt group, who are backed by the country’s elite, plan to meet on Monday upon the expiry of a deadline they set a week ago for the government to deal with the Reds.

World Malaria Day: 2010

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World Malaria day – A Day to Act

25 April is a day of unified commemoration of the global effort to provide effective control of malaria around the world. This year’s World Malaria Day marks a critical moment in time. The international malaria community has less than a year to meet the 2010 targets of delivering effective and affordable protection and treatment to all people at risk of malaria, as called for by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon.

On This Day in History: April 25

In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

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1 Thai PM rejects compromise deal to end protests

by Anusak Konglang, AFP

1 hr 48 mins ago

BANGKOK (AFP) – Thailand’s political crisis plunged back into deadlock Saturday after the government rejected a compromise offer from red-shirted demonstrators who said they were now braced for a crackdown.

Hopes for an agreement to end weeks of protests, which have been punctuated by deadly street clashes, evaporated as Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva ruled out the “Red Shirts” offer to disperse if polls were called in 30 days.

“No, I reject it. Because they use violence and intimidation I cannot accept this,” Abhisit said of the proposal which would have seen a ballot held in 90 days and was a softening of earlier demands for snap polls.

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