On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack destroyed much of the United States' fleet, especially the battleships. This collection of pictures captures the attack on Pearl Harbor, including pictures of planes caught on the ground, battleships burning and sinking, explosions, and bomb damage.

For decades, scientists have been trying to figure out why one in five births in a small town in Brazil are twins (the usual average is one in 80 births). Could notorious Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele be responsible? Argentine historian Jorge Camarasa believes Mengele, using the pseudonym Rudolph Weiss, made a number of visits to the Brazilian town of Candido Godoiwas during the 1960s to continue his twin research.

The town, very concerned about this potential tie to a Nazi, asked scientists at a Brazilian university (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul) to research the cause of the high twin rate. The scientists discovered that the high rate of twins went back to at least 1927, which was years before Mengele reached Brazil. Also, the rate of twins has continued to be high to the present day, which is years after Mengele's death. The conclusion is that Mengele could not have been the cause of twin town.

Find out more about the research and other possible reasons for the high birth rate by reading this National Geographic article.

Very early in the morning of December 3, 1984, poison gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant into the sleeping city of Bhopal, India. The lethal gas caused the deaths of an estimated 3,000 to 8,000 people and injured thousands more.

In 2009, the 25th anniversary of the gas leak brings attention to the survivors of the accident, many of whom have suffered long-term illnesses related to their exposure to the gas. Most have received very little aid from the Indian government or from Union Carbide.

For the 25th anniversary of the tragedy, the government had planned to open what remains of the fertilizer plant to the public. However, just days before the anniversary, the government decided not to open the plant, citing regulations against grandstanding before elections. There is a lot of controversy surrounding whether or not the plant should be opened to the public. For more about the plant nearly opening, see this CNN article.

According to Germany's The Local, pieces of the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing went up for sale on Ebay starting on Tuesday, December 1. The pieces for sale used to be part of the border crossing along the Berlin Wall, but currently reside as part of an arched roof for a parking lot.

In January 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill sat at the Casablanca Conference with U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to determine the course of World War II. At the Casablanca Conference, the decided that the Allies would fight until Germany agreed to an unconditional surrender and that the D-Day invasion would be postponed in favor of an attack in Italy. While discussing these important matters, Churchill smoked a cigar.

When the conference was over, Churchill's assigned butler, Ronald Williams, took the partly smoked cigar as well as some name plates from the table. Williams held onto these treasures until he passed them on to his 12-year-old grandson, Christian Williams, in 1987. The cigar surfaced recently when Christian Williams took the cigar to Antiques Roadshow to get it appraised. The presenter appraised it at £800 (about $1,300). Williams plans on keeping the cigar unless a museum or someone from Churchill's family would like to buy it. For more about Churchill's cigar and it's journey, see this Mail Online story.y

Last week, an auction went up on Ebay offering samples of Benito Mussolini's brain and blood for a starting bid of 15,000 Euros ($22,600). Mussolini's granddaughter, Alessandra Mussolini, was outraged at the discovery and believes the samples must have been stolen from the Policlinico hospital in Milan, Italy where Mussolini's body was taken for an autopsy after his execution. The hospital, however, states that all samples taken from Mussolini's remains were destroyed in 1947. Since the auction violated Ebay's policy of no human matter, the officials at Ebay removed the auction from their site before any bids were made. For more information about the auction, see this BBC News story.

The peace symbol was a symbol of the 1960s and is still popular today. It can be found on clothing, signs, purses, spare tire covers, and so much more. What many people don't know about the peace symbol, the circle with three lines within it, is that it was originally designed in 1958 by British artist Gerald Holtom. Learn more about the history of the peace symbol.

Online College has collected a fascinating list of 100 history-related channels on YouTube. The channels run the gamut of both time and topics, but a number of them are related to the 20th century. The list includes such topics as the Holocaust, the Berlin Wall, JFK's assassination, computer history, history of rock 'n' roll, the women's movement, history of flight, and more.

For centuries in China, it was common for young girls to have their feet bound, with their toes pulled under the base of the foot. This binding would deform the girls' feet, resulting in feet so petite that they were hardly larger than a child's. The other result of foot-binding made women hardly able, or completely unable, to walk.

Although foot-binding was banned in 1912, the long-held practice lingered in many areas. When the Communists came to power in China in 1949, foot-binding finally ended. The history of this practice is fascinating. Were girls' feet bound purely for erotic reasons? If it prevented women from working, why would peasants also bind their children's feet? For more information on "Lotus Flower" feet and the few remaining survivors of the practice, see this interesting article in The Wall Street Journal.

After police raided his home in Duisburg, Germany, a man known as Adolf Storms was arrested and charged with 58 counts of murder. It is believed that Storms is a former member of the fifth SS Tank Division "Viking" and helped hatch a plan on March 28, 1945 to kill Jewish laborers at the end of World War II. Carrying out their plan, Storms and other SS took 57 Jewish inmates into the woods outside of Deutsch Schuetzen, Austria and shot them. He is also accused of killing another Jewish prisoner during a death march. For more information about Storms, read this AFP article.