WHAT YOU MUST KNOW

🇷🇴🇬🇧 WWII uncovered: Legendary Spymaster of the SOE: Vera Atkins. Born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Bucharest, Romania, Vera went to London with her parents in 1933, where she adopted her mother's last name.  She studied modern languages at the Sorbonne and went to finishing school at Lausanne. According to the Imperial War Museum: "At the outbreak of the war, Vera May Atkins joined F Section of Special Operations Executive (SOE) in April 1941, initially as a secretary but was soon promoted to become an Intelligence Officer and Deputy to Colonel Maurice Buckmaster, head of F Section. "Vera was responsible for overseeing training and ensuring that when her agents arrived in France they had complete false identities and watertight cover stories.  Every agent was escorted by Atkins herself to the secret airfield where she watched them leave Britain, often for the final time. Even with such preparation, operations were very dangerous– in an interview with IWM in 1987, Vera sai...

Eben Byers (April 12, 1880 – March 31, 1932) was an American socialite, sportsman, and industrialist. He won the 1906 U.S. Amateur in golf.  He died from multiple radiation-induced cancers after consuming Radithor, a patent medicine made from radium dissolved in water. Byers was born into a wealthy family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He attended Yale University, where he was a member of the Skull and Bones society.  After graduating from Yale, Byers worked in the steel industry and became president of the Girard Iron Company.  He was also a successful amateur golfer and won the U.S. Amateur in 1906. In 1927, Byers was injured in a car accident and began taking Radithor, a patent medicine that was advertised as a cure-all for a variety of ailments.  Radithor was made from radium dissolved in water, and it was believed to have rejuvenating and restorative properties.  Byers drank Radithor regularly for several years, believing that it was helping him to reco...

Gordon, the man who never gave up on freedom, 1863 - This picture here shows a former African American slave called Gordon or "Whipped Peter" and the extent of the brutal whippings he received during his time as a slave.  The picture is known as "The Scourged Back" and it became one of the most important and recognisable pieces of Union material during the American civil war.  It exposed the physical injuries slaves often received while being held prisoners.  It inspired the populations of the Union in the civil war to continue the fight, and to aim to end slavery, which had become a stain on American society.  Gordon escaped John and Bridget Lyons cotton plantation in Louisiana in 1860.  The plantation had about 40 slaves in total at the time of Gordon's run for freedom.  He was chased after by bloodhounds but confused them by rubbing his body with onions that he stole and by jumping over a creek or going through a river.  This messed up his trail of ...

John Richlie of Missouri found an abandoned trapper's cabin in western Montana in the early 1880s, and decided to try his hand at homesteading, according to the Bonner Milltown History Center and Museum.  In 1884, he sent for his wife, Adelia, and his mother-in-law, Barbara Zaugg and her children, Celia, Martha, Emma, Emil, and Arnold. The history center notes that Arnold was around 12 years old, and when John and Adelia Richlie moved away to the DeSmet area, he helped his mother “prove up” on the homestead near Bonner. The 1940 census puts Arnold at 65 years old as the head of the household, so he may have been closer to 9 when he moved to Montana.  But in 1940, his sisters Cecelia, Martha, and Emma lived with him, as did Conrad Richlie ,21, and Wayne Richlie,19. In this undated photo, a bearded Arnold Zaugg is holding Jack Richlie, who is rubbing his eye. Great generational ties!  A label affixed to the upper left corner of the photo reads "58." Photo caption reads: Arn...

During the summer of 1937, Otisville locals Dale Smith, aged 13, and Everett Betts, aged 7, noticed branches sticking up in the waters of Picnic Lake.  The boys were intrigued and reached for the branches, only to discover the “wood” wasn’t really wood at all…  The boys pulled out the antlers and skeletal remains of a huge 6- by 6-foot elk rack.  After leaving the skull and bones behind, they took the antlers home and hung them up years afterward.  In the 1980s, Smith donated the antlers to the Otisville Area Historical Association.  The museum staff sent the antlers to a lab in Florida for carbon dating testing.  The results shocked the town—not only were the antlers much older than the original guess of 70 years, but they were remnants of a now-extinct species of elk, the Eastern elk.  The carbon dating results posited that the antlers could be from as early as 1520, but were most likely from between 1640 and 1660.  Today, the antlers are on dis...

The Horrible Story of  Blanche Monnier who was born into a wealthy family in France in 1849.  In 1874, when she was about 25 years old, she met an old lawyer who she wished to marry.  But in 1875 Monnier disappeared and was not seen by anyone for over 25 years.  During this time the lawyer died and her family were oblivious to what had happened to her—or were they...  In 1901 the Paris Attorney General received a letter that read:  "Monsieur Attorney General: I have the honor to inform you of an exceptionally serious occurrence.  I speak of a spinster who is locked up in Madame Monnier's house, half-starved and living on a putrid litter for the past twenty-five years – in a word, in her own filth. The author of this letter is unknown to this day. When the police investigated the house they came across an appalling sight in the attic.  It was Blanch Monnier starving and living in her own waste.  The policeman who discovered her explained what ...

A teacher once  gave her fifth-grade class an assignment... Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories. Ashley said, "My father's a farmer and we have a lot of egg-laying hens. One time we were taking our eggs to market in a basket on the front seat of the car when we hit a big bump in the road an...d all the eggs went flying and broke and made a mess." "What's the moral of the story?" asked the teacher. "Don't put all your eggs in one basket!" "Very good," said the teacher. Next little Sarah raised her hand and said, "Our family are farmers too. But we raise chickens for the meat market. We had a dozen eggs one time, but when they hatched we only got ten live chicks, and the moral to this story is, "don't count your chickens before they're hatched." "That was a fine story Sarah. Michael, do you have a stor...

3 year old chimney sweep in 1933. In the late 1600s in England in response to the Great Fire of London, which gutted the city, building codes changed, requiring chimneys to be much narrower than previously.  Due to the new design, keeping the chimneys free of obstruction became more of a challenge and a priority.  Shockingly, instead of someone inventing a tool for this purpose, children were employed as human chimney sweeps.  For over 200 years, this practice went on, in spite of the deplorable conditions the children lived in, the horrible health effects they suffered, and the many injuries and fatalities resulting from related work hazards. Master Sweeps took in homeless young boys or bought young children from orphanages or from destitute parents; and the children were supposedly chimney sweep apprentices.  Instead, they were nothing less than indentured servants, harshly treated and forced to work from dawn until dusk every day of the year but one. The small boy...

Young Fred Fearing was a resident of Elizabeth City, both fiercely Patriotic and independent.   Fred was 14 years old when war broke out overseas.   He quickly visited his nearest recruiting station and signed the papers to go-lying about his age saying he was 17, however he would need his parents signature.   Reluctantly, his mother signed, what she knew to be, her Sons life away and off Fred went.   This small town boy somehow ended up on the mid-lines on the beaches of Normandy-his Commanding Officer told him, prior to exiting the boat, “Run Fred-run as fast as you can, don’t look around, don’t stop-just run until you get to the outcropping on the bank”.  Fred did just that—he said he had always been praised for his bravery, but there wasn’t an ounce of it there that day.   He just ran, scared out of his mind—a little boy that so desperately missed his Mother, his baseball mitt and his dog.   Days turned into weeks, Fred followed inst...

A PAF HERO'S STORY: A great story of Anthony James Bautista (The son of LTC ANTONIO BAUTISTA, PAFFS/ PAFACES Class of 1958. prominent pilot of the Blue Diamonds ang Golden Sabres Aerobatic Teams and a hero of the AFP counter-insurgency operations in the early 1970s, the PAF Air Base at Puerto Princesa, Palawan was named after him in honor of his sacrifice) about his dad... "To commemorate Araw ng Kagitingan allow me to tell a Love Story that speaks of courage, destiny, and Poetic Justice. In 1942, During World War 2, there was a fenced internment camp holding Filipino and American POW's in Los Baños, Laguna.  A small bread delivery boy used to crawl under the fence to hand over bread to the prisoners.  This was dangerous because the Japs had this tendency of bayoneting bothersome children.  The boy's mother pleaded with her son to stop, but the boy was brave and persistent and continued to defy the Japanese invaders in his own small way. Jordan Thomas was an American p...

ON THIS DAY: 16 JANUARY 1945: Adolf Hitler moved into the 'Fuhrerbunker. Adolf Hitler moved into the 'Fuhrerbunker': a subterranean complex located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.  Constructed in two phases between 1936-44, it was the last of the Fuhrer Headquarters used by Hitler during WWII.  Once Hitler moved into the bunker it became the centre of the Nazi regime until the last week of the war.  It consisted of approximately 30 small rooms protected by four metres (13 ft) of concrete along with a concrete roof that was three metres (9.8 ft) thick.  Hitler's own accommodation was decorated with high-quality furniture taken from the Reich Chancellery and several framed oil portraits, including one of Frederick the Great.  Other chambers included a conference-map room, kitchen and wine store, telephone switchboard and a suite for the Goebbels family.  Because the bunker was below the water table, conditions were unpleasantly damp with pumps continuou...

On This Day - March 8, 1969 – Dwight D.  Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States and one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, dies in Washington, D.C., at the age of 78. Born in Denison, Texas, in 1890, Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915, and after World War I he steadily rose in the peacetime ranks of the U.S. Army.  After the U.S. entrance into World War II, he was appointed commanding general of the European theater of operations and oversaw U.S. troops massing in Great Britain.  In 1942, Eisenhower, who had never commanded troops in the field, was put in charge of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria.  As supreme commander of a mixed force of Allied nationalities, services, and equipment, Eisenhower designed a system of unified command and rapidly won the respect of his British and Canadian subordinates. From North Africa, he successfully directed the invasions ...

Something we need to relearn and why I'm reposting it! <3 Author unknown. I talked to a man today I talked with a man today, an 80+-year-old man. I asked him if there was anything I can get him while this Coronavirus scare was gripping America. He simply smiled, looked away and said: "Let me tell you what I need! I need to believe in, at some point, this country my generation fought for... I need to believe in this nation we handed safely to our children and their children... I need to know this generation will quit being a bunch of sissies...that they will respect what they've been given...that they've earned what others sacrificed for." I wasn't sure where the conversation was going or if it was going anywhere at all. So, I sat there, quietly observing. "You know, I was a little boy during WWII. Those were scary days. We didn't know if we were going to be speaking English, German or Japanese at the end of the war. There was no certainty, no guara...

On This Days In History - President, a five-star General in the Army: and Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe during WWII, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower was born on this day in 1890.  He received an appointment to West Point and graduated in 1915, and was then stationed in Texas as a second lieutenant.  When the US entered World War I, he immediately requested an overseas assignment but was denied.  He instead commanded a unit that trained tank crews at Camp Colt – his first command.  In his early Army career, he excelled in staff assignments, serving under Generals John J. Pershing, Douglas MacArthur, and Walter Krueger.  After Pearl Harbor, General George C. Marshall called him to Washington for a war plans assignment.  He commanded the Allied Forces landing in North Africa in November 1942; on D-Day, 1944, he was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces.  "War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as...

26 September 1941 - MILITARY POLICE CORPS BRANCH BIRTHDAY - #WWII #MPCorps. Based on the Army's experience of having specially trained and dedicated Military Police (MP) units in #WWI , the National defense Act of 1920 authorized the formation of a permanent MP corps, but one was not established for two decades.  Just before the U.S. entry into World War II the Army established the Provost Marshal General's Office and a Corps of Military Police as a branch.  The Army had Provost Marshall General Offices and precursor MP organizations to enforce laws and maintain order and discipline during the Revolutionary War, American Civil War and World War, all of which were disbanded after those conflicts.   Since its establishment in 1941, the Military Police Corps fulfills a number of law enforcement and combat roles.  In the latter, its missions include route reconnaissance, convoy security, providing security for senior officers, and handling detainees and prisoners of...

On This Day - April 8, 1981 – General of the Army Omar Bradley. (The G.I.'s General), commander of the 12th Army Group who ensured Allied victory over Germany and last of WWII's five star Generals, dies of a heart attack in NYC.  Born on February 12, 1893, Bradley was a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (Dwight Eisenhower was a classmate).  During the opening days of World War II, he commanded the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was later placed at the head of the II Corps for the North African campaign, proving instrumental in the fall of Tunisia and the surrender of over 250,000 Axis soldiers.  He led forces in the invasion and capture of Sicily and joined his troops in the Normandy invasion, which culminated in the symbolic liberation of Paris by Bradley’s troops.  He was promoted to commander of the US 12th Army Group, the largest force ever placed under an American group commander, and led successful operations in France, Luxembou...

 November 1885 – George Smith Patton, one of the great American generals of World War II, is born in San Gabriel, California.  Patton came from a family with a long history of military service.  After studying at West Point, he served as a tank officer in World War I, and his experience in that conflict, along with his extensive military study, led him to become an advocate of the crucial importance of the tank in future warfare.  After the American entrance into World War II, Patton was placed in command of an important U.S. tank division and played a key role in the Allied invasion of French North Africa in 1942.  In 1943, Patton led the U.S. Seventh Army in its assault on Sicily and won fame for out-commanding Montgomery during the so-called Race to Messina.  Although Patton was one of the ablest American commanders in World War II, he was also one of the most controversial.  He presented himself as a modern-day cavalryman, designed his own uniform,...

VETERANS' DAY HONORS ALL WHO HAVE SERVED. At approximately 1500 hours on June 16, 1944, some ten days after the D-Day invasion, the U.S. Army’s 96th Evacuation Hospital disembarked from their Landing Craft Tanks and gathered behind the sand dunes on Utah Beach in France.  Among the members of that unit was a young soldier from Monticello, Private First Class John Conway. From Utah Beach, the unit traveled by truck to the fields west of Ste-Mère-Eglise, and established itself as a functioning hospital.  During its time at Ste-Mère-Eglise, the hospital received 4,000 patients and executed 2,700 surgical operations, while hosting visits by Lt. General Omar N. Bradley and Lt. General George S. Patton.  By late in November, the 96th was in Germany, the first U.S. Army Evacuation Hospital to enter the country, and the month of December was spent treating casualties from the Battle of the Bulge.  During the first week of fighting the 96th Evacuation Hospital, the first to s...

THE WESTERN STAR   June 15, 1944 WAYNESVILLE NURSE AMONG FIRST TO LAND IN FRANCE: When any event of world-wide importance takes place, there you will find Warren Countians. It happened in 1917 when Lt. Zola Wood, formerly of Lebanon, now of Los Angeles, Calf., sister of Bill Wood of Lebanon was on of the first nurses to land in France.  Her brother Col. Harry T. Wood, graduate of West Point, is in some overseas war theater. It happened again last week when Lt. Suella Bernard* of Waynesville was among the first five nurses to arrive in France. Lt. Bernard, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Bernard of Waynesville, graduate of Waynesville High in 1937 and later entered nurses training at Springfield City Hospital.  After he graduation she went to Sidney Hospital where she was a floor nurse. She enlisted last June and has been overseas several months.  Her two brothers, S 1-C Elvin Bernard and S 2-C William Bernard are in the Navy. Her parents are doing war work in D...

Doris Miller, known as "Dorie" to shipmates and friends, was born in Waco, Texas, on 12 October 1919: „ to Henrietta and Conery Miller. He had three brothers, one of which served in the Army during World War II.  While attending Moore High School in Waco, he was a fullback on the football team and he worked on his father's farm. On 16 September 1939, he enlisted in the U.S Navy as Mess Attendant, Third Class, at Dallas, Texas, so he could travel, and earn money for his family.  He later was commended by the Secretary of the Navy, was advanced to Mess Attendant, Second Class and First Class, and subsequently was promoted to Ship's Cook, Third Class.   UNDERSTAND, this was about all the segregated U.S. Navy would allow an able bodied male Negro to do in the service of his country.   Following training at the Naval Training Station, Norfolk, Virginia, Miller was assigned to the ammunition ship USS Pyro where he served as a Mess Attendant.   On 2 January 1...

Audie Murphy of B Company, 15th Regiment, Third Division. The most decorated soldier in the U.S. Army. At Salzburg, Austria on 2 June 1945, Lieutenant General A.M. Patch, Commander of the 7th Army presented Murphy with the Medal of Honor and Legion of Merit for his actions at Holtzwihr. When asked after the war why he had seized the machine gun and taken on an entire company of German infantry, he replied, “They were killing my friends. Murphy was born on June 20, 1925, in Kingston, Texas as the seventh of 12 children. Murphy’s mother died just before his 16th birthday in 1941.  He tried to enlist in both the Army and Marines but was rejected for being both underage and underweight.  His older sister helped forge his birth certificate and signed an affidavit where he was finally accepted into the Army on June 30, 1942. He was just 16 years old. In late February 1943 he was shipped out to Casablanca, Morocco as part of B Company, 1st Bn. 15th Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Infant...

Honoring those who gave their lives at Pearl Harbor Doris "Dorie" Miller (October 12, 1919 – November 24, 1943) was a cook in the United States Navy noted for his bravery during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  He was the first African American to be awarded the Navy Cross, the third highest honor awarded by the U.S. Navy at the time, after the Medal of Honor and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal. The Navy Cross now precedes the Navy Distinguished Service Medal.  Miller's acts were heavily publicized in the black press, making him the iconic emblem of the war for blacks—their "Number One Hero"—thereby energizing black support for the war effort against a colored Japanese enemy. Attack on Pearl Harbor On December 7, 1941, Miller awoke at 0600. After serving breakfast mess, he was collecting laundry when the first of nine torpedoes to hit the West Virginia was launched at 0757 by Lt. Commander Shigeharu Murata of the Japanese carrier Akagi.  Mil...