Jennifer's 20th Century History Blog May 2008 Archive

In February 1967, the U.S. Navy established a secret observation squadron (VO-67) whose job was to hinder North Vietnamese from entering South Vietnam, especially along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. ... Read More

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has just announced the 11 most endangered historic places in the United States for 2008. On the list are California State Parks, the Sumner ... Read More

This winter, a new memorial will be dedicated in Gan Meir in Tel Aviv, Israel to the homosexual victims of the Holocaust. Designed by Ron Assouline of the firm Filmind, ... Read More

A letter written by Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind recently went on the auction block. The letter, written in German on January 3, 1954, reveals Einstein's unfettered thoughts on ... Read More

On May 8, 2008, I reported that ten new, previously unpublished, pictures of the Hiroshima bombing had become available online. The professor at UC Merced who posted the pictures has ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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, ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More

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 ... Read More