Jennifer's 20th Century History Blog

Beginning during the Korean War (1950-1953) and continuing until 2000 when a cease-fire was reached, both North and South Korea launched propaganda campaigns. These campaigns included dropping millions of leaflets on towns and villages in an attempt to demoralize the other side. One South Korean man remembers picking up the leaflets and turning them into the local police in exchange for comic books or treats. The International Herald Tribune tells the story of how this same man, Jin Yong Seon, established a Remembrance Museum that hosts a collection of these "paper bombs" about 90 miles outside of Seoul.

The death toll from the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that hit just outside of Chengdu, China on Monday, May 12, 2008 continues to rise. The latest estimates range from 15,000 to 30,000 people dead. This is the deadliest earthquake to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed 255,000 people.

Having been in her family for nearly a century, a woman recently decided to sell a utility table via a classified ad. The man who purchased the table, Ron Ciarmello, discovered that the top of this table appeared to be made out of a crate shipped to "W. Wright, Elizabeth City, North Carolina.” Ciarmello contacted Wright-expert Dr. Larry Tise of East Carolina University. Although Tise is still researching this, it seems that this might be the same table used by the Wright brothers in their kitchen. For more information about this newly discovered Wright artifact, read the WITN-TV article.

On September 11, 2001, United Flight 93 was the only hijacked plane that did not hit its target. Thanks to determined passengers who fought with the terrorists, the plane crashed into a field just outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania rather than hitting its Washington D.C. target. Plans have been made to create a memorial at the location of the crash site. However, the design that was chosen (among over 1,000 possibilities) has caused many to complain. The design, created by architect Paul Muroch, includes a tower that will hold 40 wind chimes and an arc of maple trees around the edge of the field. Critics say that the tower resembles an Islamic minaret (the tower on a mosque) and that the arc of maple trees resembles the crescent moon.

In 1945, U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp found an undeveloped roll of film in a cave just outside of Hiroshima. On the film, were ten pictures of the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In 1998, Mr. Capp donated the pictures to the Hoover Institution Archives with the caveat that they not be made public until 2008. You can now see all ten pictures online, but I must warn you, they are very graphic.

As the Great Depression whipped through the United States, so did massive dust storms. These dust storms ruined farm land and sent farmers searching for work out West. But what caused these dust storms and why were they so bad? New research has provided some answers. Read the Live Science article for more information about this environmental disaster.

Although Lenin accepted the Gregorian calendar in the Soviet Union in 1918, the Soviets revamped the entire calendar again 1929, creating a Soviet revolutionary calendar that had five-day weeks. Learn more about the history of the calendar and the Soviet calendar reforms.

In August 2007, the remains of two children were found buried in a field just outside the city where the last Russian czar and his family were held prisoner and later killed. Many believed the remains were Czar Nicholas II's two missing children, his only son Alexei and his daughter Maria. DNA tests on these remains have just been completed and confirm that they were the two missing Romanov children. After decades of questions and thoughts of possible survival, we now know that all of Czar Nicholas II's family were killed on that fateful night in 1918.

The meltdown of the fourth reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine on April 26, 1986 caused a huge, deadly environmental disaster. At the time, the Soviets quickly covered the remnants of reactor four with a concrete and iron covering to prevent further radioactive contamination. Unfortunately, over the past 22 years, this covering has deteriorated to the point that there are large cracks and radiation seepage.

From money collected from international donors, a huge project is underway to make the entire Chernobyl area safer. Work has now started to create a huge, metal arch that will contain the radioactive ruins of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Since the end of World War II, Adolf Hitler's book, Mein Kampf has not been allowed to be published in Germany. However, in 2015, the copyright on the book will run out and Mein Kampf will then be in the public domain. (In Germany, copyright lasts for 70 years after the author's death.) Many fear what uses neo-Nazis will make of the book. To combat rampant printing and use of Mein Kampf for racist purposes, historians and others are advocating for an academic printing of the book within Germany that would include a large amount of annotations to place the work in a historical context.

Is printing an academic version of Mein Kampf a good idea? Is there any way to prevent neo-Nazis and others from using Hitler's book to promote their racist philosophies? (Please post your thoughts by clicking "comments" below.)