Category: History
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Edmund Hillary, who along with Tenzing Norgay was the first known person to have climbed to the summit of Mount Everest has died at the age of 88. On May 29, 1953, they became the first men to climb the 29,035 feet to the top of the highest mountain peak in the world and safely return,…
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A church tower in eastern Germany has overtaken the Leaning Tower of Pisa in its reckless inclination. The tower of the Church of Our Beloved Ladies by the Mountain sits on uncertain porous grounds with numerous cracks and fissures. It began tilting ever since it was built in 1382. Now it has outleaned its competitor…
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The novel Anna Karenina begins with the memorable line, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy may as well have opened his other opus, War And Peace with its corollary, "Peace and prosperity are all alike in every place; every war torn nation is brutalized and…
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(Indians and Pakistanis light candles at a border town, jointly commemorating the independence days of both countries. Photo: Times of India) India and Pakistan celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of their independence this month – India on the 15th of August and Pakistan, a day earlier on the 14th. Sixty years ago, the ancient land of…
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Last week I reported the story of Glenn McDuffie, the Houston man who was recently identified as the sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square in the celebrated 1945 Life magazine photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt. The picture seen and recognized by millions, is an historical moment captured by a photographer’s lens, marking the end of…
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Alfred Eisenstaedt’s emblematic photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square in 1945 was made famous by Life magazine. The kiss is widely recognized as an event marking the end of World War II. Since the publication of the photo, there has been some dispute about the identity of the two kissers. In…
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Which scientific discoveries had the best eureka moments in terms of serendipity, putting two and two together where others saw a brickwall or occasionally even in the dreamlike mystical nature of the revelations ? Who’s to say? Personal scientific biases play a role in compiling lists of seminal moments in scientific progress. In any case,…
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The sparsely populated state of Nebraska is best known for its cold climate, corn, beef and football. But Nebraska has also contributed an impressive array of national luminaries in the fields of literature (novelist Willa Cather, poet John G. Neihardt), philosophy (Saul Kripke), the financial world (Warren Buffett) and show business (Henry Fonda, Fred Astaire,…
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In the forty years since the tumultous days of Israel’s 1967 Six Day War against the joint attack by Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the memory of that war and the image of Israel have undergone a sea change. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is no longer seen in the context of Israel’s stunning victory against impossible odds,…
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