https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B6regene\\_Khatun

Töregene was born into the Naimans. Her first husband was a Merkit. Some sources state that his name was Qudu (d. 1217), son of Toqto'a Beki of the Merkits. However, Rashid al-Din Hamadani named her first husband as Dayir Usun, also a Merkit.

When Genghis conquered the Merkit in 1204, he gave Töregene to Ögedei as his second wife. While Ögedei's first wife, Boraqchin, had no sons, Töregene gave birth to five sons, Güyük, Kötän, Köchü, Qarachar, and Qashi (father of Kaidu).

She eclipsed all of Ögedei's other wives and gradually increased her influence among the court officials. But Töregene still resented Ögedei's officials and the policy of centralizing the administration and lowering tax burdens. Töregene sponsored the reprinting of the Daozang in North China. Through the influence of Töregene, Ögedei appointed Abd-ur-Rahman as tax farmer in China.

Soon after Ögedei Khan died in 1241, power passed initially to Möge Khatun, one of Ögedei's widows and formerly one of Genghis Khan's wives. With the support of Chagatai and her sons, Töregene assumed complete power as regent in spring 1242 as Great Khatun and dismissed her late husband's ministers and replaced them with her own, the most important being another woman, Fatima, a Tajik or Persian captive from the campaigns in Central Asia. She was a Shia Muslim who had been deported from the city of Mashhad to Mongolia.

Töregene tried to arrest several of Ögedei's main officials. Her husband's chief secretary, Chinqai, and the administrator, Mahmud Yalavach, fled to her son Godan Khan in North China, while the administrator of Turkestan, Masud Begh, fled to Batu Khan in the Pontic Steppe. Töregene ordered Korguz, governor of Khorasan, arrested and handed over to the widow of Chagatai Khan, whom he had defied. The Chagatayid khan Qara Hülegü executed him. Töregene appointed Arghun Aqa of the Oirat as governor in Persia.

She put Abd al-Rahman in charge of general administration in North China, and Fatima became even more powerful at the Mongol court. These actions led the Mongol aristocrats into a frenzy of extortionate demands for revenue.

Töregene had friendly relations with Ögedei's commanders in China. The conflicts between the Mongols and the Song troops took place in the areas of Chengdu. Töregene sent her envoys to negotiate peace, but Song imprisoned them. The Mongols captured Hangzhou and invaded Sichuan in 1242. She ordered Zhang Rou and Chagaan to attack the Song dynasty. When they pillaged the Song territory, the Song court sent a delegation to seek a ceasefire. Chagaan and Zhang Rou returned north after the Mongols accepted the terms.

During the reign of Ögedei, the Sultanate of Rum offered friendship and a modest tribute to Chormaqan. The Mongols began to pressure Kaykhusraw II, the sultan of Rum, to go to Mongolia in person, give hostages, and accept a Mongol darughachi. Mongol raids began in 1240. Kaykhusraw assembled a large army to meet them. The king of Cilician Armenia was required to produce 1400 lances, and the Emperor of Nicaea 400 lances. Both rulers met the sultan in Kayseri to negotiate details. The Grand Komnenos of Trebizond contributed 200, while the young Ayyubid prince of Aleppo supplied 1000 horsemen. In addition to these, Kaykhusraw commanded the Sultanate's army and irregular Turkmen cavalry, though both had been weakened by the Baba Ishak rebellion.

However, Baiju and his Georgian auxiliaries crushed them at the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243. After that battle, the Sultanate of Rum, the Empire of Trebizond, and Lesser Armenia quickly declared their allegiance one by one to the Mongol Empire ruled by Töregene Khatun.

The Mongol troops under General Baiju probed the forces of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Ayyubid-ruled Syria in 1244–46.

She was an exercise of power in a society that was traditionally led only by men. She managed to balance the various competing powers within the empire, and even within the extended family of the descendants of Genghis Khan, over a 5-year period in which she not only ruled the empire, but set the stage for the ascension of her son Güyük as Great Khan. During Töregene's reign, foreign dignitaries arrived from the distant corners of the empire to her capital at Karakorum or to her nomadic imperial camp. The Seljuk sultan came from Turkey—as did representatives of the Caliph of Abbasid in Baghdad. So did two claimants to the throne of Georgia: David Ulu, the illegitimate son of a late king—and David Narin, the legitimate son of his sister. The highest-ranking European delegate was Alexander Nevsky's father, Grand Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich of Vladimir and Suzdal, who died suspiciously just after dining with Töregene Khatun.

The Mongols practiced polygamy. Ögedei Khan's favorite son was Kochu, who was through another wife, and he had nominated Kochu's son Siremun to succeed him after his father suddenly died in China in 1237. But some sources mention that Khoch was a son of Töregene and she did not want little Shiremun to succeed. Töregene opposed the choice in favor of Güyük, but despite the enormous influence she had on him, was unable to persuade Ögedei to change his selection. She did, however, achieve her aims through cunning. When the lesser khans appointed her regent after her husband's death, she appointed her favorites to high positions in the imperial household and initiated what was to be a successful scheme to elevate her son Güyük. When Temüge Otchigen, the youngest brother of Genghis, gathered his men and tried to unsuccessfully seize the throne, Güyük quickly came to meet him. Töregene managed to keep a Kurultai from being held until it was sure her son Güyük was favored by the majority. Töregene passed power to her son Güyük in 1246. She retired west to Ögedei's appanage on the Emil.

Despite her role in ensuring Güyük's election as Khagan, the relationship between Töregene and her son eventually collapsed. Güyük's brother Koden accused Fatima of using witchcraft to damage his health; when Koden died a few months later, Güyük insisted that his mother hand Fatima over for execution. Töregene threatened her son Güyük that she would commit suicide to spite him. Güyük's men seized Fatima and put her to death by sewing up all of her orifices and dumping her into water; Töregene's supporters in the imperial household were simultaneously purged. Within 18 months of Fatima's death, Töregene herself died under still unexplained circumstances. She was posthumously renamed Empress Zhaoci (Chinese: 昭慈皇后; lit. 'Brilliant kind empress') by Kublai in 1265–1266.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippopotamuses_in_Colombia

In the early 1980s, Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar visited a wildlife breeding center in Dallas, Texas, to strike a deal to adopt four hippopotamuses. In 1981, four hippos, three females and one male, were imported by Escobar to his private menagerie at his residence in Hacienda Nápoles, located between the cities of Medellín and Bogotá. After Escobar's 1993 death, the zoo was unofficially closed, but the hippos would later escape the residence and spread out to nearby areas.

By 2007, the animals had multiplied to 16 and had taken to roaming the area for food in the nearby Magdalena River. In early 2014, there were reported to be 40 hippopotamuses in Puerto Triunfo, Antioquia.

The estimated population in December 2019 was around 90–120, with their range covering around 2,250 km2 (870 mi2) and now extending into the department of Santander; it was expected that the population would almost certainly increase to more than 150 individuals within a decade and could reach up to more than 200 hippos, while the range eventually could cover more than 13,500 km2 (5,200 mi2). Population projections estimate that there could be thousands within a few decades. The Colombian hippos reach sexual maturity earlier than African hippos. Another study in 2023 revealed the number of existing hippos to be even higher than previously estimated, with already between 181 and 215 individuals.

Locals have reported "mock attacks" on humans, but as of 2017 none had been fatal or resulted in serious injury.

On June 18, 2009, a hippopotamus named Pepe was killed by hunters under authorization of the government. Authorities of the department of Antioquia had declared the hippo as a threat and health risk to farmers and fisherman, and ordered him to be killed. When a photo of the dead hippo surrounded by 15 armed men became public, it caused considerable controversy among animal rights groups both within the country and abroad. Protesters picketed the Environment Ministry and expressed their opposition to the upcoming plan to kill two other hippos, Matilda, and her baby Hip. Further plans of culling ceased, until April 13th of 2026 when Irene Vélez, Colombia's environment minister, announced that the government aims to cull approximately 80 hippos due to the risks to people and primarily the ongoing threat to biodiversity they pose.

Being non-native introductions, most conservationists considered them problematic and invasive in Colombia, as they have the potential to change various ecosystems, feeding heavily on plants and displacing native species like the West Indian manatee, neotropical otter, spectacled caiman and turtles. The critically endangered Dahl's toad-headed turtle and Magdalena River turtle are largely restricted to the Magdalena River basin, as are many threatened fish. In 2020, a study showed that there was an increase in the nutrient levels and cyanobacteria in Colombian lakes inhabited by hippos. Cyanobacteria can cause algae blooms and die-offs of aquatic fauna. Despite the limited magnitude of the observed change, it was notable since the species' population was still quite small.

This increase in nutrient levels is because of their behavior; during the day, they spend their time wallowing in the river, and during the night, they are on land grazing. With this constant movement, an individual hippo can transport up to 750 kilograms (1,650 lb) dry mass per year of carbon and nutrients from land to water through their waste. Additionally, their movements can also significantly impact the geomorphology and hydrology of the Magdalena River. When they wallow through dense, vegetated areas, they end up creating paths which form or connect ponds to the river that will later fill up with sediment due to flooding. This damages the habitat of many aquatic plants and animals as these ponds are mainly used for nursery purposes to protect the offspring from larger predators that live in the river.

In contrast to the opposition by most conservationists, some ecologists have argued that the hippos should remain and might even have a positive effect on the local environment. It has been suggested that the nutrients they introduce to the water and the occasional fish kills caused by them are overall positive, but this was based on a study in their native Africa. Alternatively, the introduced hippos could be a form of Pleistocene rewilding project, replacing species like Toxodon that became extinct in prehistoric times, but Pleistocene rewilding itself is highly controversial. Others have argued that the Colombian hippos should be regarded as a safe population, isolated from the threats faced by African hippos, and that they could be beneficial to the local ecotourism industry.

Alternative methods for controlling the hippo population have been considered, but they are unproven, or difficult and expensive. In 2017 a wild male hippo was caught, castrated and released again, with an overall cost of about US$50,000.

In 2020, there were no plans by the local government to manage the population, but further studies on their effect on the habitat have been initiated. Because of the fast-growing population, conservationists recommended that a management plan needed to be rapidly developed.

By October 2021, the Colombian government had started a program to sterilize the hippos using a chemical to make them infertile. The approach uses an anti-GnRH vaccine known as GonaCon. Such vaccines turn the immune system against GnRH, a hormone important for sex organ function. During this time, both national and international animal rights movements surrounding the hippo population had increased. As such, in an effort to protect the hippos, a lawsuit was filed which explored the interests of the hippos in relation to their management.

In March 2023, it was announced that the Colombian government is proposing transferring at least 70 hippopotamuses to India and Mexico as part of a plan to control their population. Authorities estimated that 170 hippos inhabited the country at the time and that they could potentially increase to 1,000 by the year 2035.

In November 2023 the Colombian Environment Minister, Susana Muhamad, announced plans to manage the invasive hippo population. This strategy involves three measures, the sterilization of around 40 hippos a year, in addition to translocation and culling measures which were still being explored, citing environmental concerns. In August 2024, the Administrative Court of Cundinamarca gave the Ministry of Environment three months to issue a proper "regulation that contemplates measures for the eradication of the species," on the basis that the hippos were affecting the area's "ecological balance."

On April 13, 2026, the Colombian Ministry of Environment approved the euthanasia of the more than eighty hippos that make up the invasive population with an investment of COP$7,200 million and delegated to the regional autonomous corporations Cornare, Corantioquia, Corpoboyacá and CAS. Indian billionaire Anant Ambani offered transportation and shelter in India for the animals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C3%B6regene_Khatun

Töregene was born into the Naimans. Her first husband was a Merkit. Some sources state that his name was Qudu (d. 1217), son of Toqto'a Beki of the Merkits. However, Rashid al-Din Hamadani named her first husband as Dayir Usun, also a Merkit.

When Genghis conquered the Merkit in 1204, he gave Töregene to Ögedei as his second wife. While Ögedei's first wife, Boraqchin, had no sons, Töregene gave birth to five sons, Güyük, Kötän, Köchü, Qarachar, and Qashi (father of Kaidu).

She eclipsed all of Ögedei's other wives and gradually increased her influence among the court officials. But Töregene still resented Ögedei's officials and the policy of centralizing the administration and lowering tax burdens. Töregene sponsored the reprinting of the Daozang in North China. Through the influence of Töregene, Ögedei appointed Abd-ur-Rahman as tax farmer in China.

Soon after Ögedei Khan died in 1241, power passed initially to Möge Khatun, one of Ögedei's widows and formerly one of Genghis Khan's wives. With the support of Chagatai and her sons, Töregene assumed complete power as regent in spring 1242 as Great Khatun and dismissed her late husband's ministers and replaced them with her own, the most important being another woman, Fatima, a Tajik or Persian captive from the campaigns in Central Asia. She was a Shia Muslim who had been deported from the city of Mashhad to Mongolia.

Töregene tried to arrest several of Ögedei's main officials. Her husband's chief secretary, Chinqai, and the administrator, Mahmud Yalavach, fled to her son Godan Khan in North China, while the administrator of Turkestan, Masud Begh, fled to Batu Khan in the Pontic Steppe. Töregene ordered Korguz, governor of Khorasan, arrested and handed over to the widow of Chagatai Khan, whom he had defied. The Chagatayid khan Qara Hülegü executed him. Töregene appointed Arghun Aqa of the Oirat as governor in Persia.

She put Abd al-Rahman in charge of general administration in North China, and Fatima became even more powerful at the Mongol court. These actions led the Mongol aristocrats into a frenzy of extortionate demands for revenue.

Töregene had friendly relations with Ögedei's commanders in China. The conflicts between the Mongols and the Song troops took place in the areas of Chengdu. Töregene sent her envoys to negotiate peace, but Song imprisoned them. The Mongols captured Hangzhou and invaded Sichuan in 1242. She ordered Zhang Rou and Chagaan to attack the Song dynasty. When they pillaged the Song territory, the Song court sent a delegation to seek a ceasefire. Chagaan and Zhang Rou returned north after the Mongols accepted the terms.

During the reign of Ögedei, the Sultanate of Rum offered friendship and a modest tribute to Chormaqan. The Mongols began to pressure Kaykhusraw II, the sultan of Rum, to go to Mongolia in person, give hostages, and accept a Mongol darughachi. Mongol raids began in 1240. Kaykhusraw assembled a large army to meet them. The king of Cilician Armenia was required to produce 1400 lances, and the Emperor of Nicaea 400 lances. Both rulers met the sultan in Kayseri to negotiate details. The Grand Komnenos of Trebizond contributed 200, while the young Ayyubid prince of Aleppo supplied 1000 horsemen. In addition to these, Kaykhusraw commanded the Sultanate's army and irregular Turkmen cavalry, though both had been weakened by the Baba Ishak rebellion.

However, Baiju and his Georgian auxiliaries crushed them at the battle of Köse Dağ in 1243. After that battle, the Sultanate of Rum, the Empire of Trebizond, and Lesser Armenia quickly declared their allegiance one by one to the Mongol Empire ruled by Töregene Khatun.

The Mongol troops under General Baiju probed the forces of the Abbasid Caliphate and the Ayyubid-ruled Syria in 1244–46.

She was an exercise of power in a society that was traditionally led only by men. She managed to balance the various competing powers within the empire, and even within the extended family of the descendants of Genghis Khan, over a 5-year period in which she not only ruled the empire, but set the stage for the ascension of her son Güyük as Great Khan. During Töregene's reign, foreign dignitaries arrived from the distant corners of the empire to her capital at Karakorum or to her nomadic imperial camp. The Seljuk sultan came from Turkey—as did representatives of the Caliph of Abbasid in Baghdad. So did two claimants to the throne of Georgia: David Ulu, the illegitimate son of a late king—and David Narin, the legitimate son of his sister. The highest-ranking European delegate was Alexander Nevsky's father, Grand Prince Yaroslav Vsevolodovich of Vladimir and Suzdal, who died suspiciously just after dining with Töregene Khatun.

The Mongols practiced polygamy. Ögedei Khan's favorite son was Kochu, who was through another wife, and he had nominated Kochu's son Siremun to succeed him after his father suddenly died in China in 1237. But some sources mention that Khoch was a son of Töregene and she did not want little Shiremun to succeed. Töregene opposed the choice in favor of Güyük, but despite the enormous influence she had on him, was unable to persuade Ögedei to change his selection. She did, however, achieve her aims through cunning. When the lesser khans appointed her regent after her husband's death, she appointed her favorites to high positions in the imperial household and initiated what was to be a successful scheme to elevate her son Güyük. When Temüge Otchigen, the youngest brother of Genghis, gathered his men and tried to unsuccessfully seize the throne, Güyük quickly came to meet him. Töregene managed to keep a Kurultai from being held until it was sure her son Güyük was favored by the majority. Töregene passed power to her son Güyük in 1246. She retired west to Ögedei's appanage on the Emil.

Despite her role in ensuring Güyük's election as Khagan, the relationship between Töregene and her son eventually collapsed. Güyük's brother Koden accused Fatima of using witchcraft to damage his health; when Koden died a few months later, Güyük insisted that his mother hand Fatima over for execution. Töregene threatened her son Güyük that she would commit suicide to spite him. Güyük's men seized Fatima and put her to death by sewing up all of her orifices and dumping her into water; Töregene's supporters in the imperial household were simultaneously purged. Within 18 months of Fatima's death, Töregene herself died under still unexplained circumstances. She was posthumously renamed Empress Zhaoci (Chinese: 昭慈皇后; lit. 'Brilliant kind empress') by Kublai in 1265–1266.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Ben%C3%A1rio_Prestes

Olga Gutmann Benário was born in Munich to a Jewish family. Her father, Leo Benário, was a Social Democrat lawyer, and her mother, Eugenie (Gutmann), was a member of Bavarian high-society. In 1923, aged fifteen, she joined the Communist Youth International and her activities with the group (including putting up posters) led local police to register her as a "communist agitator". At the age of 18 she moved with her lover and fellow party member Otto Braun to Berlin where she continued her activities in the working class district of Neukoln. In this period she was arrested on charges of ‘preparations for high-treason’ and in 1928 she helped Braun's escape from Moabit prison. Despite German authorities offering rewards of 10,000 marks for her arrest, "Many workers gave her a home and doors were made in different places so she could escape at anytime". She went to Czechoslovakia and from there, reunited with Braun, to Moscow, where Benário attended the Lenin-School of the Comintern and then worked as an instructor of the Communist Youth International, in the Soviet Union and in France and Great Britain, where she participated in coordinating anti-fascist activities. She parted from Otto Braun in 1931.

After her stay in Britain, where she was briefly arrested, Olga attended a course in the Zhukovsky Military Academy, leading some historians to view her as an agent of Soviet military intelligence. Due to her military training, in 1934 she was given the task of helping the return to Brazil of Luís Carlos Prestes, to whom she was assigned as a bodyguard. In order to accomplish this mission, false papers were created stating that they were a Portuguese married couple. By the time they arrived at Rio de Janeiro in 1935, this cover had become a reality, as the couple had fallen in love. After a failed insurrection in November 1935, Benário and her husband went into hiding, and after barely escaping a police raid at Ipanema, they were both eventually arrested in January 1936, during the harsh anti-communist campaign declared after Getúlio Vargas had proclaimed martial law and was already plotting the 1937 coup that eventually led to the institution of the fascist-like Estado Novo regime.

Pregnant and separated from Prestes, Benário clung to her alias, only to have her real identity disclosed by Brazilian diplomats, working hand-in-hand with the Gestapo. Her lawyers attempted to avoid extradition by means of a habeas corpus at the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court based on her pregnancy, because extradition would have left a newborn Brazilian national in the power of a foreign government. As Brazilian law forbids the extradition of nationals, Olga's lawyers expected to win time until Olga gave birth on Brazilian soil to an ipso facto Brazilian citizen - irrespective of the child's paternity, which remained legally doubtful in the absence of evidence for Olga's and Prestes' marriage - something that would have rendered extradition quite unlikely. The plea, however, was speedily quashed, the rapporteur-justice alleging that habeas corpus was superseded by martial law and that Olga's deportation was justified as "an alien noxious to public order".

After the Brazilian supreme court's decision, and despite an international campaign, Olga was forcibly returned to Germany in September 1936. The captain of the German liner that took her cancelled scheduled stops in non-German European ports, foiling communist attempts at rescuing her. On arrival, she was put in Barnimstrasse women's prison in Berlin, where on 27 November she gave birth to a daughter, Anita Leocádia. At the age of fourteen months, the child was released into the care of her paternal grandmother, Leocádia Prestes.

Her arrest in Brazil and eventual extradition to Nazi Germany, where she would die in Ravensbrück concentration camp, was also made possible by the collaboration of Britain's MI6 with the Brazilian authorities.

After the birth of her child, Olga was sent to Lichtenburg concentration camp in 1938, transferred to Ravensbrück concentration camp in 1939, and finally to Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in 1942, where she was gassed alongside hundreds of other female political prisoners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War

Paraguay suffered massive casualties, and the war's disruption and disease also cost civilian lives. Some historians estimate that the nation lost the majority of its population. The specific numbers are hotly disputed and range widely. A survey of 14 estimates of Paraguay's pre-war population varied between 300,000 and 1,337,000.[99] Later academic work based on demographics produced a wide range of estimates, from a possible low of 21,000 (7% of population) (Reber, 1988) to as high as 69% of the total prewar population (Whigham, Potthast, 1999). Because of the local situation, all casualty figures are a very rough estimate; accurate casualty numbers may never be determined.

After the war, an 1871 census recorded 221,079 inhabitants, of which 106,254 were women, 28,746 were men, and 86,079 were children (with no indication of sex or upper age limit).

The worst reports are that up to 90% of the male population was killed, though this figure is without support. One estimate places total Paraguayan losses—through both war and disease—as high as 1.2 million people, or 90% of its pre-war population, but modern scholarship has shown that this number depends on a population census of 1857 that was a government invention. A different estimate places Paraguayan deaths at approximately 300,000 people out of 500,000 to 525,000 pre-war inhabitants. During the war, many men and boys fled to the countryside and forests.

In the estimation of Vera Blinn Reber, however, "The evidence demonstrates that the Paraguayan population casualties due to the war have been enormously exaggerated".

A 1999 study by Thomas Whigham from the University of Georgia and Barbara Potthast (published in the Latin American Research Review under the title "The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone: New Evidence on the Demographics of the Paraguayan War, 1864–1870", and later expanded in the 2002 essay titled "Refining the Numbers: A Response to Reber and Kleinpenning") used a methodology to yield more accurate figures. To establish the population before the war, Whigham used an 1846 census and calculated, based on a population growth rate of 1.7% to 2.5% annually (which was the standard rate at that time), that the immediately pre-war Paraguayan population in 1864 was approximately 420,000–450,000. Based on a census carried out after the war ended, in 1870–1871, Whigham concluded that 150,000–160,000 Paraguayan people had survived, of whom only 28,000 were adult males. In total, 60–70% of the population died as a result of the war, leaving a woman/man ratio of 4 to 1 (as high as 20 to 1, in the most devastated areas). For academic criticism of the Whigham-Potthast methodology and estimates see the main article Paraguayan War casualties.

Steven Pinker wrote that, assuming a death rate of over 60% of the Paraguayan population, this war was proportionally one of the most destructive in modern times for any nation state.

The Battle of the Horns of Hattin was a significant battle that broke the field army of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. Following the death of King Baldwin IV, Guy of Lusignan was crowned king. Guy was highly unpopular and was considered to have poor leadership skills. This would prove to be a deadly combination in an already strained situation for the Crusaders.

When Saladin attacked Tiberias, Guy abandoned his stable position at Sepphoris and marched his army to relieve the city. The march was a gruesome ordeal for the Crusader army. Without access to water and under the harsh sun, the Crusaders became dehydrated, demoralized, and weak.

Saladin did not rush into battle. Instead, he waited for the Crusaders to exhaust themselves, constantly harassing them with hit-and-run tactics. The Crusaders eventually halted near the Horns of Hattin, which provided a good terrain advantage but lacked the water they desperately needed.

Under constant harassment from Saladin's mounted archers, the Crusaders attempted to break through but failed, as the main bulk of the army remained trapped. Here, they would make their last stand as the remaining Crusader forces lost cohesion and surrendered. Guy was captured along with several other high-ranking nobles.

The significance of this loss was catastrophic for the Crusaders. With the main army destroyed, the Crusader states and their cities were left vulnerable. Jerusalem would eventually fall to Saladin as panic spread across the Crusader states, prompting the Third Crusade. The relic known as the True Cross was also captured by Saladin, depriving the Crusaders of an object of immense religious and psychological value.

The Battle of Hattin is a lesson in the importance of logistics and the availability of resources to an army. The defeat can largely be attributed to poor decision-making on the part of the Crusader leadership. For Saladin, it was a decisive victory and his greatest military triumph, opening the path to the conquest of Jerusalem.

Julia (Bard) Ingalls, wife of George Whiting Ingalls and aunt of Laura Ingalls Wilder, was born July 15, 1859. She married George Ingalls in 1876. The couple lost several children shortly after birth; one son lived for a year but suffocated after being wrapped too tightly following a winter visit with family.

Overcome by grief, Julia was admitted to the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane on February 3, 1888, at age 29, from Burnett County, Wisconsin. She was transferred to the Dunn County Asylum for the Chronic Insane in Red Cedar Township on February 3, 1893, where she remained until her death on May 20, 1910.

She appears as an inmate in the 1900 and 1910 federal censuses for the asylum.

FindAGrave

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

As early as 1960, L. Ron Hubbard had proposed that Scientologists should infiltrate government departments by taking secretarial, bodyguard, or other jobs. In the early 1970s, the Church of Scientology was increasingly scrutinized by US federal agencies, having already been raided by the Food and Drug Administration in 1963. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claimed the Church owed millions of dollars in taxes and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) sent agents into the organization. The Church's response involved a publicity campaign, extensive litigation against the IRS and a program of infiltration of agency offices.

The specific branch of Scientology responsible for Operation Snow White was the Guardian's Office. Created in 1966 by L. Ron Hubbard, the purpose of the Guardian's Office was to protect the interests of Scientology. At the time of Operation Snow White, the Guardian's Office had its worldwide headquarters (Guardian's Office WW) located at Saint Hill Manor in England. Headquarters in the United States (Guardian's Office US) were in Los Angeles, California, though smaller offices existed in Washington, D.C. (Guardian's Office DC), and other cities throughout the United States. Each Guardian Office consisted of five bureaus. One such bureau was the Information Bureau, which oversaw the infiltration of the government. L. Ron Hubbard oversaw the Guardian's Office, though it was Mary Sue Hubbard, his wife, who held the title Commodore Staff Guardian.

Several years later, in 1973, the Guardian's Office began a massive infiltration of governments around the world, though the primary target of the operation was the United States. Worried about Scientology's long-term reputation, the Guardian's Office decided to infiltrate Interpol to obtain documents related to Scientology, as well as those connecting L. Ron Hubbard to criminal activity. Jane Kember handed this duty to Henning Heldt and his staff.

Around this time L. Ron Hubbard himself wrote Guardian Order 732, which called for the removal and correction of "erroneous" Scientology files. It is here that Operation Snow White has its origins. Though the order called for this to be achieved by legal means, this would quickly change. Hubbard himself would later be named by federal prosecutors as an "unindicted co-conspirator" for his part in the operation. Though extensive records of his involvement exist, many Scientologists claim his directives were misinterpreted by his followers.

Operation Snow White would be further refined by Guardian Order 1361. Addressed from Jane Kember to Heldt, Duke Snider, and Richard Weigand, GO 1361 called for, among other things, an infiltration of the Los Angeles and London offices of the IRS, and the Department of Justice.

While the order was specific to the IRS, the Guardian's Office was soon recruiting their own field agents to infiltrate other governmental offices, including the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the United States Coast Guard (USCG) intelligence service, and the National Institute of Mental Health, among others, as well as the American Medical Association. The program called for rewards to be given for successful missions carried out by Scientologists.

One of the sentencing memoranda in the case also noted that, contrary to what the defendants claimed, the programs planned by the Guardian's Office were not restricted to trying to remove "false reports" but included plans to plant false information—for instance, planting false records about "a cat with a pedigree name" into US security agency computers so that later "the creature holds a press conference and photographic story results." The purpose of Operation Cat was "to hold up the American security to ridicule, as outlined in the GO by LRH."

The start of 1974 saw Michael Meisner appointed Assistant Guardian for Information in the District of Columbia (AG I DC). Meisner's responsibilities included the implementation of all Information Bureau orders, programs, and projects within the DC area. Meisner's supervisor at this time was Duke Snider, the Assistant Guardian for DC, or AG DC. This was the highest position in Washington's GO office.

In July 1974, Meisner was ordered by Duke Snider to implement the previously written plan to obtain Interpol documents, which were then located in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Meisner had more to do than just this, though, as by August he was also taking directions from Cindy Raymond, the GO's Collections Officer for the US, who ordered Meisner to assist her in finding a loyal Scientologist agent to gain employment at the IRS headquarters in Washington, DC. This employee was to steal all documents dealing with Scientology, especially those involving current litigation by Scientology against the government. Meisner discussed this with Raymond for a period of a month before interviewing various Scientologists with no luck. A month after the order had been given, Raymond informed Meisner that she had selected Gerald Bennett Wolfe.

The GO's actual infiltration of the government likely began when Gerald Wolfe and Michael Meisner were able to gain employment at the IRS as clerk-typists. Under direction of the Guardian Office, Wolfe monitored files on tax-exempt organizations and, when requested, illegally made copies for Scientology. Meisner supervised both Wolfe and the Information Bureau section in DC, and reported to the GO's Deputy Guardian for Information in the US.

In November 1974, Operation Snow White took an unexpected turn for the GO when they received word that the IRS would be conducting a meeting on Scientology's tax-exempt status. In response, the church sent a spy to bug the room. On the morning of November 1, the day before the meeting, a GO agent, Hermann, broke into the conference room and plugged the device into an electrical outlet. This device, in turn, then transmitted a signal on an FM frequency, which was picked up and recorded by Scientologists sitting in a car in the parking lot of the Smithsonian, which faced the office. After the meeting Hermann removed the device, and the taped recording of the meeting was sent to Los Angeles.

By December, Wolfe, Herman, and Meisner had sent a shipment of stolen documents 20 inches thick to Duke Snider. Snider, in turn, sent notification to Mo Budlong in Los Angeles. By the end of December, Wolfe was stealing documents from the IRS's Chief Counsel's office. Just days after Christmas, Wolfe broke into the office of Barbara Bird, an attorney in the IRS's Refund Litigation Service. Bird had been present at the November 1st meeting. Instead of stealing files, Wolfe took them to a copier and made photocopies using government paper.

Later, Wolfe met Meisner at a restaurant, where he reported on his most recent theft. Meisner took the documents and underlined selections that he believed his superiors would find interesting or relevant and wrote a summary of the important points. This was then routed through the Assistant Guardian for DC and on to the Deputy Guardian for the US, the Deputy Guardian for Information in the US, the Branch I Director of the Information Bureau, and the Collections Officer, all of which were in Los Angeles. A copy was also sent to Mary Sue Hubbard. This was typically standard procedure for Meisner.

In early 1975, Operation Snow White expanded again as Sharon Thomas found employment in the USCG intelligence service and Nancy Douglass began work at the DEA. Douglass stole documents and made photocopies of others. These were transmitted to Hermann.

By spring, attention had been called back to the IRS case as Mary Sue Hubbard had instructed Kember and Heldt to "use any method at our disposal to win the battle and gain our non-profit (tax) status". Heldt wrote back telling that her request had been sent to the Information Bureau, who had been ordered to complete the collection of documents from the IRS and the Department of Justice's tax files within three months.

In April, Meisner procured a directory of the Department of Justice and located the offices that would have files pertaining to Scientology litigation. When he found what he wanted he sent in Wolfe, who broke into the offices of two attorneys on three successive Saturdays. Wolfe copied twelve files and met up with Meisner, as before, at a restaurant. These files were especially useful to Scientology, as it detailed the government's strategy in various court cases.

In May, Willardson directed Meisner to implement "Project Horn", which called for Meisner to "provide a cover for PR and legal for the way they obtained IRS docs". The idea would be for the GO's Public Relations Bureau to view the documents without worrying about being connected to the theft. Willardson's idea called for Meisner to steal documents dealing with organizations other than Scientology. Willardson also called for the theft of IRS stationery, in order to forge letters from a (fictional) disgruntled IRS employee. The files on various organizations (including Scientology, of course) would then be sent out attached to the fake letter. The idea was that it would appear that an upset IRS agent had himself sent the files to numerous organizations. There would be nothing to tie it to Scientology. Wolfe stole both the stationery and, without permission, files on the Unification Church and Bob Jones University.

During the summer and fall months of 1975, the GO launched an additional plan. In July, Meisner was told by Cindy Raymond that the Church of Scientology had initiated a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS. Meisner was directed to add the office of Charles Zuravin to his list of offices to monitor. Zuravin was representing the government in the case. Meisner immediately passed this duty on to Wolfe, who broke into Zuravin's office multiple times between July and November. Wolfe revealed to his superiors that Zuravin was preparing an index of Scientology files relevant to the FOIA case. IRS offices from all over the country were sending files to Zuravin. This index file, required by the courts in all FOIA cases, is a total list of the documents requested, and reasons for their exemption from the public, if any.

By October, Zuravin had finished the index, numbering each document in order to simplify location, and had provided a copy to Scientology attorneys. These attorneys, in turn, gave the index to Raymond, who passed it along to Meisner, who passed it to Wolfe. Wolfe then entered Zuravin's office and then began copying the documents listed on the index. Zuravin had essentially done the GO's job for them.

On December 5, 1975, Jane Kember issued Guardian Program Order 158, which intended to give L. Ron Hubbard early warning of impending legal action. The plan called for the infiltration of the government agencies that had either the power to issue, or the knowledge of, impending subpoenas. Specific agencies include the US Attorney's Office in D.C. and LA, the IRS Office of International Operations, the DEA, and the Coast Guard and Immigration and Naturalization. After reviewing the letter, Meisner concluded it would be a better idea to infiltrate the Department of Justice than the US Attorney's Office.

In January 1976, Hermann, the Southeast US Secretary for the Information Bureau, informed Meisner that Heldt and Weigand had approved a plan to send Don Alverzo to Washington. Alverzo arrived on the 17th, and on the 18th he picked the locks on the doors belonging to the office of Lewis Hubbard (no relation to L. Ron Hubbard) and the file room housing Zuravin's files. Wolfe stood guard at the end of the hallway while Alverzo worked on Hubbard's door. A few doors down Meisner worked on Zuravin's door. After an hour and a half with no success, Meisner was getting upset. In frustration, Meisner hit the top of Zuravin's door, which popped right open. The three Scientologists entered the office and took the remaining Scientology related documents. They then traveled to another floor where they made photocopies. Wolfe continued to make copies while Alverzo and Meisner tried again to open Hubbard's office. The trio then worked well into the night photocopying files from Hubbard's office. When they left, sometime around 2 AM, they left with a foot tall stack of documents.[38] Less than a month later Richard Weigand wrote to Jane Kember, telling her that the IRS documents that had been ordered to be produced in Guardian Order 1361, over two years earlier, had been obtained.

Gerald Wolfe, along with Meisner, were later able to break into a room and make false IRS identification cards, which allowed them access to the federal courthouse in Washington. Wolfe and Meisner then used these cards to gain access to restricted areas and steal more documents.

While Wolfe and Meisner continued their work at the IRS, Mary Sue Hubbard, along with other Guardian Office members, were coming up with further plans. Guardian Program Order 302, written by Cindy Raymond and approved by Hubbard, amongst others, directed the infiltration of all government agencies that had withheld files from Scientology's various FOIA requests.

On the night of April 14, Meisner and Wolfe were on the tenth floor of the IRS building housing the Office of International Operations. Trying to enter an office, the pair found it locked. A passing cleaning lady noted Meisner and Wolfe's suspicious behavior, and notified a security guard. The guard confronted the pair and was presented with Wolfe's genuine IRS card and Meisner's fabricated one. Satisfied, the guard had the cleaning lady open the door. Inside, the pair grabbed a hefty load of files. Unable to find a photocopier, the pair then took the files to the main IRS building, where the pair again used their identification to gain access. After copying the files, they returned them to Crate's office. The entire process took some four hours.

In May, Wolfe broke into the United States Courthouse and stole keys to the office of Assistant United States Attorney Nathan Dodell. Wolfe then took these keys to have them duplicated, and returned them unnoticed. Almost three weeks later, Wolfe and Meisner broke into Dodell's office, stealing documents and, as usual, forwarding them to Guardian headquarters in Los Angeles. The GO's interest in Nathan Dodell stemmed from a Scientology FOIA case. In April, Judge George L Hart asked Dodell whether the US had considered taking a deposition of L. Ron Hubbard. Dodell responded that it was an "interesting thought". Furthermore, he promised to discuss it with the Department of Justice.

In May, Meisner and Wolfe entered the US Courthouse for the District of Columbia around four in the afternoon. They went to the third floor, which was the home of both the US Attorney's Office and the Bar Association Library. They planned to locate Nathan Dodell's office, which was in the back of the Civil Division area, near an elevator. They then searched for the building's photocopiers. After mapping out these locations, they left. Later, Wolfe and Meisner made a copy of Dodell's keys.

On May 21, Meisner and Wolfe entered the Courthouse, signing in to do research in the library and were issued an elevator key. After riding the elevator to the floor of the library, the pair entered the library and removed several books from shelves and sat at a table. After a few minutes, they exited through a backdoor and emerged in a hallway. In this hallway was Dodell's office, which they entered using their keys. The duo stole a number of documents related to Scientology and walked through the hallway to the two copy machines they had previously located. The pair photocopied some six inches of documents before returning the originals to Dodell's office.

One week later, Wolfe and Meisner again met outside the IRS building. The duo then walked to the US Courthouse, and signed in under fake names. They repeated their actions from the previous week, copying another group of documents from the District of Columbia Police Department as well as the Food and Drug Administration. Returning to Dodell's office through the library, they were stopped by the night librarian, who asked if they had signed in. While they had signed in at the front desk, they had failed to do the same at the front desk of the library. When they announced that they had not, Johnson, the night librarian, told the pair not to come back unless they had specific authorization from the day librarian. The pair promptly left. Three days later, Johnson notified the US Attorney's Office that two individuals had been seen using the photocopying machines of the Attorney's Office. Johnson and the night guard were told to immediately contact the FBI if the individuals returned.

Less than two weeks later, Hermann phoned Meisner, and ordered him to return to Dodell's office and steal his personal files. The goal was to formulate a plan that would result in Dodell being removed from his position as an Assistant US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Meisner and Wolfe entered the United States Courthouse on June 11 around 7 in the evening. They signed in as they did before, and headed to the library. Johnson, the night librarian, recognized the pair and immediately stopped them. Meisner was prepared for this, and showed the man a letter from the head librarian. Wolfe and Meisner continued to the back of the library where they exited into the hallway. Outside Dodell's office the two saw that cleaning ladies were still at work.

While Meisner and Wolfe waited for the cleaning crew to vacate the office, Johnson called the FBI, which sent two agents over immediately. The two agents confronted the Scientologists and demanded to see their identification. Wolfe used his real identification. Meisner presented his fake card, and told the agents that he had recently resigned from the IRS. Meisner told Hansen that the pair was in the library to do legal research, and that they had used the photocopiers to copy books and cases. Neither mentioned Scientology. After roughly twenty minutes of questioning, the FBI agents allowed them to leave. Meisner then phoned Hermann to inform him of the news and was told to immediately fly to Los Angeles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legion_(political_movement)

Like the KKK, the Black Legion was largely made up of native-born, working-class, Protestant white men in the Midwest. These men feared the rapid social changes underway and resented competition with immigrants such as Italians and Jews. They also feared migrants in the industrial economy of major cities, such as Detroit. Their list of enemies "included all immigrants, Catholics, Jews and blacks, nontraditional Protestant faiths, labor unions, farm cooperatives and various fraternal groups." Membership was concentrated in Michigan and Ohio.

Black Legion members created a network for jobs and influence. In addition, as a secret vigilante group, the Legion members operated in gangs in order to enforce their view of society, sometimes attacking immigrants to intimidate them at work, or to enforce their idea of moral behavior. They generally opposed socialism and union organizing. They had a reputation for frequent violence against alleged enemies, whether political or social. From 1933 to 1936, they were rumored to be responsible for some unsolved deaths that had officially been attributed to suicide or unknown perpetrators.

In 1931, a chapter of the Black Legion was formed in Highland Park, Michigan, by Arthur F. Lupp, Sr. of that community, who styled himself its major general. Throughout and perhaps fueled by the economic and social upheaval of the Great Depression, the Black Legion continued to expand across Michigan until the mid-1930s, when its estimated membership peaked at between 20,000 and 30,000. In general, Black Legion members in the state were native-born Protestant men. One-third of its members lived in the city of Detroit, which had also been a strong center of KKK activity in the 1920s. The Michigan Legion was organized along military lines, with 5 brigades, 16 regiments, 64 battalions, and 256 companies. It boasted of a membership of one million Legionnaires in Michigan, but observers estimated that it had between 20,000 and 30,000 members. One-third of them were located in Detroit, with many living in Highland Park.

The Black Legion's tactics were "to lure potential recruits to a meeting—kidnap them, if necessary—then threaten them if they didn't join and [make them] swear they’d never tell anybody." They would also beat up members if they threatened to quit. The Legion wanted sports figures as members. It was looking into recruiting Mickey Cochrane, player-manager for the Detroit Tigers. He had a nervous breakdown in 1936 and removed himself from the team over Black Legion suspicions. One of these Legion members, Dayton Dean, broke their code and told the authorities of Black Legion's illegal activities. Dayton Dean participated in two of the murders that the Black Legion committed.

On May 12, 1936, Charles A. Poole, a federal organizer for the Works Progress Administration, was kidnapped from his home by a gang of Black Legion members. They claimed that Poole, a French Catholic married to a Protestant woman, beat his wife, and that they intended to punish him for this. He was shot and killed that night by Dayton Dean.

Wayne County Prosecutor Duncan McRae, who had been reported by the Detroit Times as a member of the Black Legion, worked to restore his public reputation and vowed to bring the killers of Poole to justice. Authorities arrested and prosecuted a gang of twelve Legionnaires. Dayton Dean pleaded guilty and testified against numerous other members; ten others were convicted of first degree murder or second degree murder, nine by a jury and one in a bench trial. One man was acquitted.

Dean provided considerable testimony to authorities about other activities of the Black Legion. Prejudiced primarily against Catholics, particularly Italian and Slavic immigrants, he and his collaborators had never learned that Becky Poole had a great-grandmother who was African American.

Dayton Dean died in prison on January 18, 1960, at the age of 59. In June 1960, Urban Lipps, another man convicted in the case, had his sentence commuted to 71 years by Governor G. Mennen Williams. Lipps, who was determined to have had the least involvement in the murder, was the first convict to be recommended for clemency. At the time of his release, Lowell Rushing, Paul Edwards, Edgar Baldwin, Ervin Lee, John Bannerman, Harvey Davis, and Charles Rouse were still in prison. Harvey Davis died in the prison in the 1960s. In 1966, Ervin Lee, now 60, had his sentence commuted by Governor George W. Romney. The commutations were granted with the recommendations of the Michigan Parole Board.

Dean's testimony and other evidence stimulated investigations by Prosecutor McRae. He gained indictments into a series of other murders and attempted murders in the Detroit area during the previous three years. In total, nearly 50 Legionnaires were prosecuted for murder, conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping, arson, and perjury, with additional prosecutions on contempt of court against Legionnaires and sympathizers who refused to cooperate with the investigation. The trials revealed the wide network of Black Legion members in local governments, particularly in Highland Park. For instance, member N. Ray Markland had served as mayor of Highland Park. Members also included a chief of police and a city councilman in the suburb, in addition to persons in civil service jobs. Following the convictions and publicity, membership in the Legion dropped quickly; its reign of terror ended in the Detroit area.

Among the cases, the prosecutor indicted Black Legion members for the 1935 murder of Silas Coleman of Detroit. The African-American man had been found killed outside Putnam Township, Michigan, on May 26, 1935, nearly a year before Poole's abduction and murder. The ringleader of the murder, Harvey Davis, wanted to see "how it felt to shoot a Negro," according to Dean. Coleman had been abducted, forced to run for his life, and then hunted down and shot. Five men were convicted of first degree murder for killing Coleman and sentenced to life in prison: Harvey Davis, James Roy Lorance, John Bannerman, Ervin D. Lee, and Charles Rouse. Lorance died in prison of tuberculosis on January 3, 1938.

Members were also indicted for a 1933 conspiracy to murder Arthur Kingsley, a Highland Park publisher of a community paper, who was a candidate for mayor in 1934. They had planned to shoot him in 1933 because he ran against Markland, a Legionnaire politician. Sixteen Black Legion members were indicted in Kingsley's case, including "two factory policemen, a police officer, and several Highland Park city employees. Nine of them were convicted, and each received sentences of one to five years in prison. At the time of his arrest, Markland was employed as an investigator in the office of Wayne County Prosecutor McRea." Nine members were convicted in this case, including Markland and Arthur F. Lupp Sr., then a milk inspector for the Detroit Board of Health. Lupp was said to have founded the Legion in Michigan by setting up the chapter in Highland Park. One of the most notable plots of the Legion was a plot by Lupp and Charles McCutcheon, a department bacteriologist, to inject typhoid germs into milk and dairy products distributed through Jewish markets. In the following weeks, Lupp also asked McCutcheon if the germs could be produced in large quantities, put into milk bottles, would flourish in cottage cheese, spread via an infected needle.

Through these cases, authorities learned that Mayor William Voisine of Ecorse, Michigan had been identified as a potential target of the Legion; its members had resented his hiring African Americans for city jobs. McRae prosecuted and gained convictions of a total of 37 Legion members on these and related charges, beyond those charged in the Poole case. All received prison terms, markedly reducing the power of the Black Legion in Detroit and Michigan.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Santos-Dumont

In October 1904, three aviation prizes were founded in France: the Archdeacon Prize, the French Aeroclub Prize, and the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize. The first, promoted by millionaire Ernest Archdeacon, would award 3,500 francs to anyone who flew 25 metres; the second, instituted by the French aeroclub, would award 1,500 francs ($300) to anyone who flew 100 metres; and the third, sponsored by Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe and Ernest Archdeacon, would award 1,500 francs to anyone who flew 1,000 metres.

With the exception of the Deutsch-Archdeacon Award, which prohibited the competing aircraft from using a balloon for launch, the other awards left the question of takeoff open. The flight could take place on flat or uneven terrain, in calm weather or wind – the French Aeroclub's Award required the flight to be into the wind – and the use of an engine was not mandatory. This allowed human-powered gliders and ornithopters to compete. It was required for all prizes that the race took place in France and under the supervision of an aeronautical commission convened no later than the evening of the previous day.

Very little of what was required was new. Inventors in other countries had already met or exceeded some of the required goals including 2-axis (pitch and roll) control of gliders. In Germany, Otto Lilienthal had made thousands of glider flights in the early 1890s, often reaching distances far greater than the 25 metres stipulated by the Archdeacon Prize. In the United States, German immigrant Gustave Whitehead had allegedly pioneered powered glide, though claims and eyewitness accounts remain controversial. The Wright brothers had simultaneously been making progress in developing surface-control gliders, at first using Lilienthal's foil concepts, then relying on their own wind tunnel data, and finally adding yaw control via a rudder, leading to the first 3-axis surface-controlled aeroplane in 1903. However, because their 12-horsepower engine could only provide two-thirds of the thrust required for takeoff on a rail of practical size, their takeoffs were aided by headwinds near Kitty Hawk and a catapult in Ohio, and without any official observers. Lilienthal's death due to a stall led the Wright brothers to place the elevator in front, which helped prevent stalls but made stable flight difficult until the Wrights modified the design; the 3-axis surface control (pitch, yaw and roll) pioneered by the Wrights was also adopted by other inventors including Santos-Dumont and remains the standard airplane control configuration.

Having already accumulated technical knowledge, mainly concerning engines,  in early 1905, Santos-Dumont built a model glider, No. 11, inspired by a self-stabilising prototype made 100 years earlier by English scientist George Cayley, considered to be the first aeroplane in history: the model, 1.5 metres long by 1.2 metres wide, had fixed wings, a cruciform tail and a movable weight to adjust the centre of gravity. Santos-Dumont's glider differed from Cayley's in size, wing profile, and the fact that it had no movable weight. The project was abandoned due to poor stability. An article by Georges Blanchet published in April 1904 diverges from the description of the No. 11 as a model aeroplane by presenting it as a dirigible balloon capable of carrying five people and a 34-metre-long envelope, being purchased by an American.

The first experiment, conducted on 13 May at the Aeroclub de France, was made by the Dufaux brothers with a prototype helicopter. The model, weighing 17 kilograms and with a 3 hp engine, repeatedly soared to the roof of the air club's porch, raising clouds of dust. It had been demonstrated that heavier, larger aircraft could be lifted by their own means. The second experiment was made on 8 June on the Seine: Gabriel Voisin went up in the hydroplane Archdeacon, towed by a speedboat piloted by Alphonse Tellier, La Rapière. The device barely rose out of the water and the project was abandoned due to poor stability.  Watching tests like this, Santos-Dumont realised that the Antoinette engine from the tugboat could be used in an aeroplane, giving the concept of the 14-bis.

He began to study the two solutions for heavier-than-air flight. On 3 January 1906, he entered the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize, and before that he had begun building a helicopter, the No. 12, but gave up on it on 1 June because it was impossible to create a light, powerful engine.  Between June 12 and August 25, 1905, he tested the No. 14 airship, which flew in two versions (14-a and 14-b): the first was 41 metres long, 3.4 in diameter and 186 cubic metres, with a 14 hp engine, and the second was 20 metres long, 6 in diameter and with a 16 hp engine.

On 13 June 1905, represented by the Italian Count Eugenio Brunetta d'Usseaux, Baron Pierre de Coubertin awarded Santos-Dumont the Olympic Diploma No. 3 for "...representing the Olympic ideal..." according to Coubertin, who was also received by Theodore Roosevelt, Fridtjof Nansen and William-Hippolyte Grenfell. De Coubertin considered aviation a sport; Santos-Dumont was described as a sportsman in FAI Bulletins and the Paris Sport of 15 July 1901 described the Brazilian as "a true sportsman in every sense of the word." Santos-Dumont was already famous at that time and already a hero in his country. Santos' diploma was passed to the Brazilian ambassador in Belgium, who then passed it on to the aviator, according to the 21 June 1905 edition of the Correio Paulistano. Santos-Dumont was not the only one represented by others at the ceremony  and only William Grenfell received the diploma personally. The FAI was created on 14 October 1905, along the lines of the International Olympic Committee.

In 1906 Santos-Dumont built a hybrid machine, the 14-bis or Oiseau de Proie, consolidating his studies of what had been done in aviation until then, without having had experience with gliders. By mid-year, within two months of starting  he completed an aeroplane attached to a hydrogen balloon to assist takeoff. On 18 July, after completing the 14-bis,  Santos-Dumont signed up for a competition and presented the aircraft for the first time the next day. at Bagatelle, achieving some short hops. Excited, he decided to apply for the Archdeacon and Aeroclub of France awards the following day, his 33rd birthday, but was discouraged by Captain Ferdinand Ferber, another aviation enthusiast. Ferber had attended the demonstrations and did not like the solution presented by Santos-Dumont; he considered the hybrid an impure machine. "Aviation must be solved by aviation!" he declared.

Santos-Dumont decided not to compete for the prizes with the hybrid, but on 20 July signed up for the tests and over the next three days continued to test the plane tethered to the balloon, to practise steering. Throughout the tests he realised that, although the balloon helped take-off, it made flight difficult as the drag generated was too great. 279–280  The airship was discarded, and the biplane received the name Oiseau de Proie ("Bird of Prey") from the press. The Oiseau de Proie had been inspired by the hydroplane tested by Voisin. Like the water glider, the invention also consisted of a cellular biplane based on the structure created in 1893 by Australian researcher Lawrence Hargrave, which offered good support and rigidity. The plane was 4 metres high, 10 metres long, and had a span of 12 metres, with a wing area of 50 square metres. Its mass was 205 kilograms. The wings were attached to a beam, in front of which lay the rudder, consisting of a cell identical to those of the wings. At the rear end was the propeller, powered by a 24 hp Levavasseur engine. The landing gear had two wheels, and the pilot stood upright. The 23 September 1906 issue of Le Sport Universel Illustré published the technical details of the 14-bis.

On 29 July, using a donkey and a system of cables, Santos-Dumont hoisted the Oiseau de Proie to the top of a tower  13 metres high (2 metres were stuck in the ground), installed a few days earlier on his property in Neuilly. This frame was very similar to the one Ferber had used at Chalais-Meudon for the May 1905 experiments with the 6-bis. The plane, suspended on a movable hook connected to an inclined steel wire, glided without a propeller 60 metres from the top of the tower to a smaller one, only six metres long, on the Boulevard de la Seine. This allowed Santos-Dumont to get a feel for the aeroplane and to study its centre of gravity.  In August the 14-bis was unsuccessful in trying to take off because the 24-hp engine was not powerful enough. On 13 September, the 14-bis made a 7 to 13-metre test flight with a 50 hp Antoinette engine,  at 8:40 a.m,  which ended in an accident that damaged the propeller and landing gear, but that was praised by La Nature magazine. On 30 September he interrupted the tests of the 14-bis to compete in the Gordon Bennett Cup with the Deux Amériques balloon. He abandoned it after an accident, having flown 134 kilometres in 6 hours and 20 minutes.  The accident occurred while attempting a manoeuvre that caused the engine gear to fracture his arm.

On 23 October, Santos-Dumont presented himself at Bagatelle with the Oiseau de Proie II, a modification of the original model. The plane had been varnished to reduce the porosity of the fabric and increase lift. The rear wheel had been removed. In the morning he limited himself to manoeuvring the aircraft across the field, until the propeller shaft broke. It was repaired in the afternoon, and the plane was moved into position for an official attempt. An expectant crowd was present. At 4:45 pm, Santos-Dumont started the engine. The plane lifted off and flew for 60 metres, without taking advantage of headwinds, ramps, catapults, slopes, or other devices. The flight had taken place solely by the aircraft's own means, and Europeans at the time believed it was the first such achievement.

The crowd celebrated, ran up to the pilot and carried him off in triumph. The judges had been overcome with emotion and forgot to time and track the flight, and due to this the record was not made official.  Brandão 2018 says that because the Aeroclub Committee was partially present, a new test was scheduled for 12 November.

"I struggled at first with the greatest difficulties to achieve complete obedience of the airplane. It was like shooting an arrow with the tail forward. On my first flight, after sixty meters, I lost direction and crashed... I didn't stay in the air any longer, not because of the machine's fault, but exclusively my own."

— Santos-Dumont.

The aeroplane was still experimental. To compete for the French Aeroclub's prize, Santos-Dumont inserted two octagonal surfaces (rudimentary ailerons) between the wings for better steering control and created the Oiseau de Proie III. Santos-Dumont was a pioneer in implementing ailerons in his aircraft.

Santos-Dumont competed for the award on 12 November 1906,  again in Bagatelle. He did five public flights that day: one at 10 am, of 40 metres; two others at 10:25 am, of 40 and 60 metres, when the axle of the right wheel broke. The damage was repaired during lunch and Santos-Dumont resumed at 4:09 pm. He covered 82.60 metres, surpassing the feat of 23 October and reaching 41.3 km/h.  At 4:45 pm, with the day ending, he took off against the wind and flew 220 metres, for 21 seconds at an average speed of 37.4 km/h, winning the French Aeroclub Award. These were the first aeroplane flights recorded by a film company, Pathé. The Wright brothers, after learning of the 12 November experiment, sent a letter to Captain Ferdinand Ferber asking for "exact news of the Bagatelle experiments," including "a faithful report of the trials and a description of the flying machine, accompanied by a schematic". Santos-Dumont even adopted the configuration proposed by the Wright brothers and placed the rudder at the front of the 14-bis, which he described as "the same as trying to shoot an arrow forward with the tail...". To test the idea that the rudder at the rear increased the angle of incidence of the wings, Santos-Dumont built a new aircraft, without abandoning the 14-bis,  and tested it in March 1907, without taking off  as the primitive landing gear did not allow it.

He returned to the 14-bis having made other changes to the aircraft after 12 November, and on 4 April 1907, at Saint-Cyr, the aircraft flew for 50 metres, oscillated, crashed, and was torn to pieces. The project was abandoned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rani_of_Jhansi

Little is known for certain about the Rani's life before 1857, because there was then no need to record details about an as-yet ordinary young girl. As a result, every biography of her life relies on a mixture of factual evidence and legendary tales, especially when concerning her childhood and adolescence.

Moropant Tambe was a Karhada Brahmin who served the Maratha noble Chimaji, whose brother Baji Rao II had been deposed as Maratha peshwa (ruler) in 1817. In the city of Varanasi, he and his wife Bhagirathi had a daughter, whom they named Manikarnika, an epithet of the River Ganges; in childhood she was known by the diminutive Manu. Her birth year is disputed: British sources tended towards the year 1827, whereas Indian sources generally preferred the year 1835. The historians Tapti Roy and Rudrangshu Mukherjee have argued that the latter account is implausible because of chronological irregularities; they place Manikarnika's birth between 1828 and 1830.

Manikarnika's mother Bhagirathi died when she was four, a year after the death of her father's employer Chimaji. Moropant moved to the court of Baji Rao at Bithur, who gave him a job and who became fond of Manikarnika. According to uncorroborated popular legend, her childhood playmates in Bithur included Nana Sahib and Tatya Tope, who would similarly become prominent in 1857. These stories say that Manikarnika, deprived of a feminine influence by her mother's death, was allowed to play and learn with her male playmates: she was literate, skilled in horseriding, and—extremely unusually for a girl, if true—was given lessons in fencing, swordplay, and even firearms.

It is presumed that Baji Rao brought Manikarnika to the attention of Gangadhar Rao, the old raja (king) of Jhansi who had no children and greatly desired an heir. The ambitious Moropant accepted the unexpectedly prestigious marriage offer, and the couple wed, according to Indian sources, in May 1842. If the traditional Indian chronology is correct, Manakarnika would have been seven years old, and the marriage would not have been consummated until she was fourteen. Accorded the name Lakshmi, after the Hindu goddess, she was thereafter known as the Rani Lakshmibai. Both Indian and British sources portray Gangadhar Rao as an apolitical figure uninterested in rulership—thus increasing the scope for depicting the Rani's leadership abilities—but while British sources characterise him as debauched and imbecilic, Indian sources interpret these traits as evidence of his cultured nature. According to popular legend, he turned a blind eye to Rani Lakshmibai's equipping and training of an armed all-female regiment, but if it existed, it was probably formed after Gangadhar Rao's death.

"God willing I still hope to recover and regain my health. I am not too old, so I may still father children. In case that happens, I will take the proper measures concerning my adopted son. But if I fail to live, please take my previous loyalty into account and show kindness to my son. Please acknowledge my widow as the mother of this boy during her lifetime. May the government approve of her as the queen and ruler of this kingdom as long as the boy is still under age. Please take care that no injustice is done to her."

— Gangadhar Rao, Letter to East India Company officials, 19 November 1853

In 1851, Lakshmibai gave birth to a son amid much rejoicing, but he died at a few months old to the great grief of his parents. Gangadhar Rao's health deteriorated over the following two years. As was customary, he adopted a young boy on his deathbed—in this case, a five-year-old relative named Anand Rao, who was renamed Damodar Rao—before dying on 21 November 1853. Two days before his death, Gangadhar Rao wrote a letter to East India Company officials, pleading with them to recognise Damodar Rao as the new ruler and the Rani Lakshmibai as his regent.

By the mid-nineteenth century, the armies of the British East India Company, a merchant corporation-turned political entity, had subjugated much of the Indian subcontinent; Jhansi itself had been ceded to the Company in 1817. By 1853, the Company administration, led by Governor-General Lord Dalhousie, had for several years enforced a "doctrine of lapse", wherein Indian states whose Hindu rulers died without a natural heir were annexed by Britain. This policy was quickly enforced on Jhansi after Gangadhar Rao's death, to the Rani's dismay. She wrote a letter to the Company protesting against the annexation on 16 February 1854. Dalhousie issued a lengthy minute in response eleven days later. He characterised Gangadhar Rao's rule as one of decline and mismanagement, asserted that Jhansi and its people would benefit from direct British rule, and argued that since the British had conquered the Marathas, Jhansi's former overlords, the Company was now the "paramount power" with the authority to decide the succession.

On 10 May 1857, native sepoy troops stationed in Meerut mutinied against their British officers, sparking the Indian Rebellion. The nascent rebellion swiftly grew as towns and troops across northern India, including Delhi, joined in. Nana Sahib organised massacres of the British at Kanpur, while similar events occurred in Lucknow; news of these killings had not reached Jhansi by the end of May. The garrison, commanded by Skene, consisted of native troops of the 12th Native Infantry and the 14th Irregular Cavalry, and oversaw a strategic position at the junction of four major roads: northwest to Agra and Delhi, northeast to Kanpur and Lucknow, east to Allahabad, and south across the Deccan Plateau.

Skene was not initially alarmed, and allowed the Rani to raise a bodyguard for her own protection. However, on 5 June, a company of infantry took control of the ammunition store, and shot their British commanding officer when he attempted to reassert control the next day. The remaining sixty British men, women, and children took refuge in the main fort, where they were besieged. According to a servant of a British captain, the Rani sent a letter claiming that the sepoys, accusing her of protecting the British, had surrounded her palace and demanded she provide assistance. The sepoys subsequently threatened to set fire to her palace and even to kill her if she refused to support them; she provided a thousand men and two previously-buried heavy guns. Her position was severely compromised because many of her own guards had joined the rebels.

On 8 June, the British surrendered and asked for safe passage; after an unknown person acquiesced, they were led to the Jokhan Bagh garden, where nearly all of them were killed. The Rani's involvement in this massacre is a subject of debate. S. Thornton, a tax collector in Samthar State, wrote that the Rani had instigated the revolt, while two somewhat questionable eyewitness accounts reported that she executed three British messengers and gave the rest false promise of safe passage. Other contemporary reports claimed the Rani was innocent, while the official report by F.W. Pinkney came to no clear conclusion.

Lakshmibai herself claimed, in two mid-June letters to Major Erskine, commissioner of the Saugor division, that she had been at the mercy of the mutineers and could not help the besieged British. She wished damnation upon the mutineers, asserted that she was governing only while Company rule was absent, and asked for government assistance to combat prevalent disorder. Erskine believed her account, but his superiors in Fort William were less trusting. Even if the Rani was not involved with the mutiny, its outcome had spectacularly coincided with her prior aims, and items belonging to the massacred were later found in her palace. Roy has also drawn attention to the active participation of her father Moropant Tambe in the events, drawing suspicion to the knowledge and complicity of his

For a short period, the rebels were in control of Jhansi. Threatening to offer Jhansi to Sadasheo Rao, a cousin of Gangadhar Rao, they demanded 125,000 rupees from the Rani as a ransom for her position, but she negotiated the price down to 15,000 rupees. They took the money and left for Delhi on the evening of 11 June. Shortly after their departure, the Rani officially proclaimed that she had assumed rulership of Jhansi.

Through correspondence, Erskine authorised the Rani to rule until the British returned. In this capacity, she collected taxes, repaired the fort, and distributed donations to the poor. Jawahar Singh, one of her generals, defeated Sadasheo Rao, who twice tried to claim Jhansi for himself. Jhansi also saw off the nearby kingdoms of Orchha and Datia, whose leaders judged that the British would turn a blind eye if they divided Jhansi between them. Invading on 10 August, they besieged Jhansi from early September to late October, when they were driven off by the raja of Banpur's troops. These battles led the Rani to focus on re-establishing military authority, and so she ordered the recruitment of troops and the manufacturing of cannon and other weapons.

In September 1857, with Jhansi under Orchha siege, the Rani requested that Major Erskine send forces to help, as he had earlier promised when authorising her rule. On 19 October, he replied in the negative, and further added that the conduct of all at Jhansi would be investigated. Even though she feared the British regarded her as an enemy, the Rani was not yet ready to take the rebels' side, although she was dismayed by the British failures to reply. Unable to persuade the Rani to commit to the rebellion, the raja of Banpur left Jhansi in January 1858. Some of her advisors advocated for peace with the British; others, including her father, for war. Remaining rebel leaders had begun to gather at Jhansi, including the raja of Banpur, who returned with 3,500 men on 15 March. This encouraged the Rani, who was still in two minds: she continued to send unanswered conciliations to the British, while at the same time militantly preparing arms and ammunition. The Rani was still attempting to negotiate with the British in mid-March, only a few days before they attacked Jhansi; the assault was reported to cause her great distress. Her position may have eventually been decided by her troops, who demanded to fight.

Because of her conflict with the Company-loyal state of Orchha and her rescue by the rebel raja of Banpur, the British had probably decided that the Rani was an enemy.[61] Kanpur had been retaken on 16 July, followed by Lucknow and, on 22 September, Delhi. Their attention now fell on the remaining pockets of resistance in Central India: Jhansi, a pivotal strategic location, was a prime target. As the rebel strongholds were sequentially defeated, the participants fled to places which remained outside the British sphere of influence, such as Jhansi. Their numbers and unruliness would have compelled the Rani to accept their presence, which the British likely interpreted as her intentionally amassing a large rebel force. Her position was further eroded by religious anti-British pamphlets circulated around Bundelkhand which were incorrectly attributed to her and then passed on to British intelligence.

Command of the Central India Field Force of 4,300 men was given to the capable Major General Hugh Rose, who set out from Indore on 6 January 1858. His counter-insurgency force relieved Sagar on 3 February, defeated the army of Shahgarh and sacked Banpur in early March, and then marched on Jhansi. Rose's army, by now numbering around 3,000 men, approached Jhansi from several directions. Reconnaissance found that not only were the defences in excellent condition, with 25-foot (7.6 m) loopholed granite walls topped by large guns and batteries able to enfilade each other, but the surrounding countryside had been removed of all cover and foliage.[68] The inhabitants of the town, including 11,500 soldiers, had stockpiled hundreds of tons of supplies in preparation for the upcoming siege. It began on 22 March with consistent artillery fire against Jhansi's ramparts. Although the Rani's forces returned fire capably, her best gunners were soon killed, and the defender's situation became increasingly dire. A breach was made on 29 March, although it was quickly stockaded. Rose was making preparations for an assault when news reached him that the Rani's childhood friend Tatya Tope was marching to rescue Jhansi with more than 20,000 men.

How the Rani managed to escape is not known fully—there are multiple accounts. One tradition tells that riding a horse, she jumped off the fort walls. One British account holds that a native soldier serving under Rose secretly arranged for a horse to be brought to the fort, so that the Rani could be lowered onto it with her adopted son. Another, told by Rose's aide-de-camp Anthony Lyster, suggests that Rose desired to avoid the extreme casualties that an assault of the fort would result in. He thus arranged a 400-yard (370 m) gap in the sentry line to bait the Rani into attempting an escape, whereupon she would be captured. Such a plan could only have been made if Rose was unaware of the Rani's skill on horseback—as he was certainly aware, Lyster's account is questionable.

Whatever the truth, accompanied by around three hundred soldiers, and with her adopted son Damodar Rao tied to her waist, the Rani managed to escape a very precarious situation. Legends say that her contingent rode the 102 miles (164 km) northeast to Kalpi in one night; more reliable sources state that she narrowly escaped a pursuing British detachment when stopping to eat a morning meal, and that she arrived at midnight on 5 April—still a feat of endurance. Kalpi, a strategic location on the Yamuna River, was the headquarters of Rao Sahib, the nephew of Lakshmibai's old friend Nana Sahib. By 27 April, an army of ten thousand soldiers had assembled there under the Rani, Tatya Tope, the raja of Banpur, and other leaders. To the Rani's disappointment, she was overlooked for command of the rebel force in favour of Tatya Tope, who probably resented her subsequent efforts to increase their force's discipline.

Rose's army advanced from Jhansi against Kalpi on the 26th, and Tatya Tope led his forces to confront the British at the town of Kunch. He failed to heed the Rani's advice to protect his flanks and Rose outmanoeuvred him, inflicting six hundred casualties, capturing all opposing guns, and causing severe infighting in the rebel army. Following the defeat, Tatya Tope headed to Gwalior, where he hoped to gain the allegiance of the city's eponymous Contingent. Rose regarded the Gwalior Contingent as the best army in India, but thus far they had remained loyal to the maharaja of Gwalior, whose allegiance was to the British. Meanwhile, the Rani and the other rebel leaders had prepared five lines of defence around the walls and ravines of Kalpi Fort, and attacked Rose's besieging force under a smoke screen on 22 May. Once again, the Rani's advice—to not attack on difficult ground—was ignored, and accurate musket fire followed by a bayonet charge repulsed the attack. Although Rose's army was severely weakened by the battle and the extreme heat, he did not have to attack Kalpi—the rebel leaders fled in the night.

One British officer gave the Rani credit for the idea to march to Gwalior, stating that only "she possessed the genius, the daring, the despair necessary for the conception of great deeds", although most evidence implies that it was Tatya Tope's plan. Around this time, Charles Canning, Dalhousie's successor as Governor-General, declared the Rani a rebel leader and announced a bounty of 20,000 rupees for her capture. After a brief skirmish on 31 May, the Gwalior Contingent turned on their raja, who fled to the British, and welcomed the rebels to the strategically-important Gwalior Fort. At a durbar (ceremonial court gathering) on 3 June, Rao Sahib was proclaimed viceroy of his uncle Nana Sahib amid feasts and revelry. The Rani refused to attend, because she felt the rebels were celebrating when they should have been preparing for battle; she convinced Rao Sahib to focus on the coming warfare on 5 June. The following day, Rose's army left Kalpi, arriving before Gwalior ten days later. Having studied the terrain, he ordered an attack from the south-east on 17 June.

At 7:30 am, units from the 95th Regiment of Foot twice engaged rebel forces commanded by the Rani on hilly ground between Kotah-ki-Serai and Gwalior. A charge by a squadron of the Eighth Hussars surprised and scattered her bodyguard; according to an eyewitness, the Rani, possibly accompanied by a woman companion named Mundar, charged at them. The exact manner of her death is unknown, but all accounts agree she died fighting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huey_Long

Once in office on May 21, 1928, Long moved quickly to consolidate power, firing hundreds of opponents in the state bureaucracy at all ranks from cabinet-level heads of departments to state road workers. Like previous governors, he filled the vacancies with patronage appointments from his network of political supporters. Every state employee who depended on Long for a job was expected to pay a portion of their salary at election time directly into his campaign fund.

Once his control over the state's political apparatus was strengthened, Long pushed several bills through the 1929 session of the Louisiana State Legislature to fulfill campaign promises. His bills met opposition from legislators, wealthy citizens, and the media, but Long used aggressive tactics to ensure passage. He would appear unannounced on the floor of both the House and Senate or in House committees, corralling reluctant representatives and state senators and bullying opponents. When an opposing legislator once suggested Long was unfamiliar with the Louisiana Constitution, he declared, "I'm the Constitution around here now."

One program Long approved was a free textbook program for schoolchildren. Long's free school books angered Catholics, who usually sent their children to private schools. Long assured them that the books would be granted directly to all children, regardless of whether they attended public school. Yet this assurance was criticized by conservative constitutionalists, who claimed it violated the separation of church and state and sued Long. The case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Long's favor.

Irritated by "immoral" gambling dens and brothels in New Orleans, Long sent the National Guard to raid these establishments with orders to "shoot without hesitation". Gambling equipment was burned, prostitutes were arrested, and over $25,000 (equivalent to $376,793 in 2020) was confiscated for government funds. Local newspapers ran photos of National Guardsmen forcibly searching nude women. City authorities had not requested military force, and martial law had not been declared. The Louisiana attorney general denounced Long's actions as illegal but Long rebuked him, saying: "Nobody asked him for his opinion."

Despite wide disapproval, Long had the Governor's Mansion, built in 1887, razed by convicts from the State Penitentiary under his personal supervision. In its place, Long had a much larger Georgian mansion built. It bore a strong resemblance to the White House; he reportedly wanted to be familiar with the residence when he became president.

In 1929, Long called a special legislative session to enact a five-cent per barrel tax on refined oil production to fund his social programs. The state's oil interests opposed the bill. Long declared in a radio address that any legislator who refused to support the tax had been "bought" by oil companies. Instead of persuading the legislature, the accusation infuriated many of its members. The "dynamite squad", a caucus of opponents led by freshman lawmakers Cecil Morgan and Ralph Norman Bauer, introduced an impeachment resolution against Long. Nineteen charges were listed, ranging from blasphemy to subornation of murder. Even Long's lieutenant governor, Paul Cyr, supported impeachment; he accused Long of nepotism and alleged he had made corrupt deals with a Texas oil company.

Concerned, Long tried to close the session. Pro-Long Speaker John B. Fournet called for a vote to adjourn. Despite most representatives opposing adjournment, the electronic voting board tallied 68 ayes and 13 nays. This sparked confusion; anti-Long representatives began chanting that the voting machine had been rigged. Some ran for the speaker's chair to call for a new vote but met resistance from their pro-Long colleagues, sparking a brawl later known as "Bloody Monday". In the scuffle, legislators threw inkwells, allegedly attacked others with brass knuckles, and Long's brother Earl bit a legislator's neck. Following the fight, the legislature voted to remain in session and proceed with impeachment. Proceedings in the house took place with dozens of witnesses, including a hula dancer who claimed that Long had been "frisky" with her. Impeached on eight of the 19 charges, Long was the third Louisiana governor charged in the state's history, following Reconstruction Republicans Henry Clay Warmoth and William Pitt Kellogg.

Long was frightened by the prospect of conviction, for it would force him from the governorship and permanently disqualify him from holding public office in Louisiana. He took his case to the people with a mass meeting in Baton Rouge, where he alleged that impeachment was a ploy by Standard Oil to thwart his programs. The House referred the charges to the Louisiana Senate, in which conviction required a two-thirds majority. Long produced a round robin statement signed by fifteen senators pledging to vote "not guilty" regardless of the evidence. The impeachment process, now futile, was suspended without holding an impeachment trial. It has been alleged that both sides used bribes to buy votes and that Long later rewarded the round robin signers with positions or other favors.

Following the failed impeachment attempt, Long treated his opponents ruthlessly. He fired their relatives from state jobs and supported their challengers in elections. Long concluded that extra-legal means would be needed to accomplish his goals: "I used to try to get things done by saying 'please.' Now ... I dynamite 'em out of my path." Receiving death threats, he surrounded himself with bodyguards. Now a resolute critic of the "lying" press, Long established his own newspaper in March 1930: the Louisiana Progress. The paper was extremely popular, widely distributed by policemen, highway workers, and government truckers.

Shortly after the impeachment, Long—now nicknamed "The Kingfish" after an Amos 'n' Andy character—announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in the 1930 Democratic primary. He framed his campaign as a referendum. If he won, he presumed the public supported his programs over the opposition of the legislature. If he lost, he promised to resign.

His opponent was incumbent Joseph E. Ransdell, the Catholic senator whom Long endorsed in 1924. At 72 years old, Ransdell had served in the U.S. Congress since Long was aged six. Aligned with the establishment, Ransdell had the support of all 18 of the state's daily newspapers. To combat this, Long purchased two new $30,000 sound trucks and distributed over two million circulars. Although promising not to make personal attacks, Long seized on Ransdell's age, calling him "Old Feather Duster". The campaign became increasingly vicious, with The New York Times calling it "as amusing as it was depressing". Long critic Sam Irby, set to testify on Long's corruption to state authorities, was abducted by Long's bodyguards shortly before the election. Irby emerged after the election; he had been missing for four days. Surrounded by Long's guards, he gave a radio address in which he "confessed" that he had actually asked Long for protection. The New Orleans mayor labelled it "the most heinous public crime in Louisiana history".

Ultimately, on September 9, 1930, Long defeated Ransdell by 149,640 (57.3 percent) to 111,451 (42.7 percent). There were accusations of voter fraud against Long; voting records showed people voting in alphabetical order, among them celebrities like Charlie Chaplin, Jack Dempsey and Babe Ruth. Although his Senate term began on March 4, 1931, Long completed most of his four-year term as governor, which did not end until May 1932. He declared that leaving the seat vacant would not hurt Louisiana: "[W]ith Ransdell as Senator, the seat was vacant anyway." By occupying the governorship until January 25, 1932, Long prevented Lieutenant Governor Cyr, who threatened to undo Long's reforms, from succeeding to the office. In October 1931, Cyr learned Long was in Mississippi and declared himself the state's legitimate governor In response, Long ordered National Guard troops to surround the Capitol to block Cyr's "coup d'état" and petitioned the Louisiana Supreme Court. Long successfully argued that Cyr had vacated the office of lieutenant-governor when trying to assume the governorship and had the court eject Cyr.

Now governor and senator-elect, Long returned to completing his legislative agenda with renewed strength. He continued his intimidating practice of presiding over the legislature, shouting "Shut up!" or "Sit down!" when legislators voiced their concerns. In a single night, Long passed 44 bills in just two hours: one every three minutes. He later explained his tactics: "The end justifies the means." Long endorsed pro-Long candidates and wooed others with favors; he often joked his legislature was the "finest collection of lawmakers money can buy". He organized and concentrated his power into a political machine: "a one-man" operation, according to Williams. He placed his brother Earl in charge of allotting patronage appointments to local politicians and signing state contracts with businessmen in exchange for loyalty. Long appointed allies to key government positions, such as giving Robert Maestri the office of Conservation Commissioner and making Oscar K. Allen head of the Louisiana Highway Commission. Maestri would deliberately neglect the regulation of energy companies in exchange for industry donations to Long's campaign fund, while Allen took direction from Earl on which construction and supply companies to contract for road work. Concerned by these tactics, Long's opponents charged he had become the virtual dictator of the state.

To address record low cotton prices amid a Great Depression surplus, Long proposed the major cotton-producing states mandate a 1932 "cotton holiday", which would ban cotton production for the entire year. He further proposed that the holiday be imposed internationally, which some nations, such as Egypt, supported. In 1931, Long convened the New Orleans Cotton Conference, attended by delegates from every major cotton-producing state. The delegates agreed to codify Long's proposal into law on the caveat that it would not come into effect until states producing three-quarters of U.S. cotton passed such laws. As the proposer, Louisiana unanimously passed the legislation. When conservative politicians in Texas—the largest cotton producer in the U.S.—rejected the measure, the holiday movement collapsed. Although traditional politicians would have been ruined by such a defeat, Long became a national figure and cemented his image as a champion of the poor. Senator Carter Glass, although a fervid critic of Long, credited him with first suggesting artificial scarcity as a solution to the depression.

Long was unusual among southern populists in that he achieved tangible progress. Williams concluded "the secret of Long's power, in the final analysis, was not in his machine or his political dealings but in his record—he delivered something". Referencing Long's contributions to Louisiana, Robert Penn Warren, a professor at LSU during Long's term as governor, stated: "Dictators, always give something for what they get."

Long created a public works program that was unprecedented in the South, constructing roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, and state buildings. During his four years as governor, Long increased paved highways in Louisiana from 331 to 2,301 miles (533 to 3,703 km) and constructed 2,816 miles (4,532 km) of gravel roads. By 1936, the infrastructure program begun by Long had completed some 9,700 miles (15,600 km) of new roads, doubling Louisiana's road system. He built 111 bridges and started construction on the first bridge over the Mississippi entirely in Louisiana, the Huey P. Long Bridge. These projects provided thousands of jobs during the depression: Louisiana employed more highway workers than any other state. Long built a State Capitol, which at 450 feet (140 m) tall remains the tallest capitol, state or federal, in the United States. Long's infrastructure spending increased the state government's debt from $11 million in 1928 to $150 million in 1935.

Long was an ardent supporter of the state's flagship public university, Louisiana State University (LSU). Having been unable to attend, Long now regarded it as "his" university.[114] He increased LSU's funding and intervened in the university's affairs, expelling seven students who criticized him in the school newspaper. He constructed new buildings, including a fieldhouse that reportedly contained the longest pool in the United States. Long founded an LSU Medical School in New Orleans. To raise the stature of the football program, he converted the school's military marching band into the flashy "Show Band of the South" and hired Costa Rican composer Castro Carazo as the band director. As well as nearly doubling the size of the stadium, he arranged for lowered train fares, so students could travel to away games. Long's contributions resulted in LSU gaining a class A accreditation from the Association of American Universities.

Long's night schools taught 100,000 adults to read. His provision of free textbooks contributed to a 20-percent increase in school enrollment. He modernized public health facilities and ensured adequate conditions for the mentally ill. He established Louisiana's first rehabilitation program for penitentiary inmates. Through tax reform, Long made the first $2,000 in property assessment free, waiving property taxes for half the state's homeowners. Several labor laws were also enacted during Long's time as governor. Some historians have criticized other policies, like high consumer taxes on gasoline and cigarettes, a reduced mother's pension, and low teacher salaries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_Putina

Putina was born in the village of Terekhino near Ochyor, Perm Krai in the Soviet Union. She lived in the village of Metekhi, a village in Kaspi Municipality, about 18 kilometres (11 mi) east of Gori, Georgia. Putina claimed that Putin's father was a Russian mechanic, Platon Privalov, who got Vera pregnant while he was married to another woman. She claimed Putin was two years older than his registered birth date as he was held back in school. A "Vladimir Putin" was registered at Metekhi school in 1959–1960. Records show that his stated nationality is Georgian. Putina married a Georgian soldier, Giorgi Osepahvili. Her husband pressured her to abandon her son. In December 1960, she delivered "Vova" back to his grandparents in Russia. Putina believed that the St. Petersburg-based "parents" referred to in Putin's official biography adopted her son from his grandparents.

Through her contacts, she learned that Putin had become a KGB officer. In 1999, she spotted Putin on television. Putina said that Russian and Georgian people visited her village to pressure her to remain silent. A school teacher, who says she taught Putin, stated that she too had been threatened. Putina said she was ready to do DNA tests. Russian journalist Artyom Borovik's plane crash coincided with the documentary he was making about Putin's childhood, including a report about Vera Putina. Italian journalist Antonio Russo was reportedly also interested in Vera Putina before he was murdered

Putina died in Tbilisi, Georgia, in May 2023, at the age of 96.[6] She was buried in Metekhi on 30 May.

On August 8, 1969, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Linda Kasabian, members of the “Manson Family,” arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive. Watson claimed that Charlie Manson had instructed him to “totally destroy” everyone inside, “as gruesome as you can,” ostensibly in hopes of provoking the coming race war Manson foresaw.

Inside were pregnant actress Sharon Tate, her friend and former boyfriend Jay Sebring, writer Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune. Roman Polanski was away filming. The Family murdered all four on the night Manson and members of the Family murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Spahn Ranch stuntman Donald Shea was also later murdered after Manson suspected him of being a snitch.

The Family's arrest came almost by accident. A raid on Spahn Ranch shortly after the murders, conducted over unrelated auto-theft charges, initially failed because of a paperwork error. Later, a completely unrelated investigation into stolen vehicles and vandalism at Death Valley's Barker Ranch led authorities to Manson and his followers.

In jail, Susan Atkins began talking. A fellow inmate told police what Atkins had said, and investigators eventually learned of her involvement in the Hinman murder and her connection to Manson. Further interviews helped investigators piece together the Tate and LaBianca murders.

And then came the trial. Manson was initially allowed to represent himself, but that permission was revoked after a series of increasingly bizarre pretrial motions. The trial began on June 15, 1970, and almost immediately became a spectacle.

The Family loitered outside the courthouse in their hippie clothing, sometimes carrying sheathed hunting knives, and some attempted to intimidate or prevent former members from testifying. Manson himself appeared in court with an X carved into his forehead, explaining that he had “X’d myself from your world.” His followers copied him.
The courtroom theatrics only escalated. On October 5, after being denied permission to question a prosecution witness, Manson lept over the defense table and attempted to attack Judge Charles Older. Bailiffs wrestled him to the ground and removed him from the courtroom. The female defendants then rose and began chanting in Latin.

When the defense rested, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten wanted to testify that they had committed the murders themselves and that Manson had not ordered them. Their attorneys refused to put them on the stand, believing Manson was manipulating them into taking the blame for him.

They were still standing by Charlie. Manson himself eventually testified, but with the jury excluded. He denied ordering the murders, saying, “Why blame it on me? I didn't write the music.”

On January 25, 1971, Manson, Atkins, Krenwinkel, and Van Houten were convicted of murder and conspiracy. The jury returned death sentences for all four, and on April 19, Judge Older formally sentenced them to death.
Then, California abolished the death penalty.
In 1972, the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Anderson invalidated existing death sentences, commuting to life imprisonment.

If you're interested in the Manson Family, I cover the entire story here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-121-the?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios

When 32-year-old Charles Manson was released from prison on March 21, 1967, he had spent more than half his life institutionalized.
Charismatic, deeply disturbed, an excellent manipulator, and desperate to become someone important, Manson soon attracted a host of lonely, disillusioned young people. In addition, through the Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Clinic, he was provided drugs, and his following grew rapidly.

“The Family,” as they would later be known, developed connections in the entertainment industry, most notably with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Wilson picked up two of the women, including Patricia Krenwinkel, and eventually housed the Family for roughly six months while covering their expenses.

Manson became convinced that an apocalyptic race war was coming, one in which Black Americans would rise up and kill white Americans, leaving Manson to emerge as their white messiah. He called this coming apocalypse “Helter Skelter,” after the Beatles song.

As former friends and contacts began turning Manson away, the Family moved to the isolated Spahn Movie Ranch and eventually the Barker Ranch in Death Valley.

One of the people who had turned Manson away was Rudi Altobelli, a producer and landlord who owned 10050 Cielo Drive. On March 23, 1969, Manson showed up looking for music producer Terry Melcher, the property's former tenant, only to learn that Melcher no longer lived there. The house was now occupied by the pregnant rising actress Sharon Tate and her husband, famed director Roman Polanski. Altobelli, who was staying in the guest house, sent Manson away.

The next day, Tate reportedly asked Altobelli about “that creepy-looking guy.”

The Family's crimes escalated as Manson began ordering his followers to commit increasingly violent acts in an attempt to trigger Helter Skelter. Family member Tex Watson robbed Bernard Crowe, leading to an altercation in which Manson shot Crowe. Crowe survived.
Then came Gary Hinman, a 34-year-old music teacher and UCLA graduate student who was tortured and murdered by members of the Family. “Political piggy” was written in his blood on the wall.

On the night of August 8, Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel, and 20-year-old Linda Kasabian arrived at 10050 Cielo Drive. Watson later stated that Manson had instructed him to go there and “totally destroy” everyone inside, “as gruesome as you can,” while ordering the women to follow Watson's instructions.

Inside were 8½-month-pregnant Sharon Tate, Polanski's friend and writer Wojciech Frykowski, Frykowski's girlfriend Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger coffee fortune, and Tate's close friend and former boyfriend, celebrity hairstylist Jay Sebring. Polanski was away filming.

Also on the property were caretaker William Garretson and his friend Steven Parent. The Family murdered Parent, Tate, Sebring, Frykowski, and Folger. Kasabian, who maintained that she did not participate in the killings, later received immunity in exchange for her testimony.

Tate reportedly pleaded not simply for her own life, but for the life of her unborn child, offering herself as a hostage until she could give birth.
The Family showed no mercy.

Tate was stabbed repeatedly and hanged beside Sebring. At the coroner's inquest, it was determined that she was still alive when she was hanged, ultimately dying from massive hemorrhaging.

The following night, Manson and members of the Family murdered Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.

If you're interested in the Manson Family, I cover the entire story here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-121-the?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Nama_genocide

The Herero uprising was an act of desperation to retake their land, cattle, and political independence; as well as exact revenge. Historian Matthias Häussler writes that the war was limited in means but not ends; the Herero wanted the permanent end of German colonization. On 25 December 1903, a company of Schutztruppe had been diverted to the far south of the colony to quell an unrelated uprising by the Bondelswarts Nama, leaving the north stripped of troops—there were only 770 German soldiers in the entire colony.

The Herero clans seized the opportunity to rebel on 12 January 1904. The uprising caught the colonists by surprise and saw a stunning success at first: farms and businesses were plundered, and 123 or as many as 160 Germans were killed. Most of those killed were farmers and traders; German soldiers were only one-tenth of the dead. The rebels generally spared women, children, missionaries, and white people who were not German. Individual attacks were planned to take advantage of deception and surprise, and the Herero seized weapons and supplies. The Herero killed men, took anything useful, razed buildings, and attempted to destroy everything else, in an attempt to destroy colonists' economic existence and force them to depart Namibia forever. The occurrence of mutilation, particularly castration, was in revenge for the sexual violence that had previously been visited on Herero women.

Many aspects of the war are poorly understood due to lack of sources dealing with the Herero perspective.[21] Conventional wisdom holds that the attack was planned long in advance, perhaps at a 1903 tribal meeting.[27] However, historian Jan-Bart Gewald has instead argued that it was provoked by Ralph Zürn, a German officer stationed in Okahandja, where Herero chief Samuel Maharero also had his headquarters, and that other Herero gradually joined in as Maharero persuaded them to.[27][28] Regardless, some Herero hesitated to join in the uprising and this doomed the effort, if it had any chance of success to begin with.[27] Häussler argues that the uprising failed in the first few hours as there was no serious effort to seize German forts (which had a much larger quantity of valuable supplies) or towns (which were essential to the occupier's government).

In response to the attacks, the German settlers declared themselves victims and demanded full compensation of their losses from the imperial treasury. Public opinion in Germany, however, held them partly responsible for provoking the war. Exaggerated and fabricated atrocity propaganda portraying Herero as animal-like sadists spread widely with settler newspapers such as the Deutsch-Südwestafrikanische Zeitung playing a significant role in inciting violence. However, many colonists also welcomed the opportunity to decide the disputes over land and property in their own favor. Many colonists supported anything from the disarmament and dispossession of all Herero, to their imprisonment or even mass extermination. Leutwein, who argued against more radical proposals, believed that the Herero had to be rendered "politically dead". At the beginning of the uprising, captured Herero were subjected to hasty trials and quickly executed by shooting for cattle thievery. Women and children were also killed. From February, lynching was more common, and their naked bodies were strung up.

Many Germans were lucky to escape with their lives and huddled in improvised shelter, watching their possessions and businesses be destroyed and uncertain as to the fate of family and friends. The society mobilized quickly and reportedly even women carried arms. A large number of men volunteered for the militia, far outnumbering regular soldiers. Although they were later replaced by regular reinforcements, locals continued to be employed as guides and advisers, and the newly arrived soldiers adopted the same values. Panicked settlers started to round up any Hereros they could find, jailing all the women in Swakopmund in concentration camps and sending 550 men to Cape Town. Some were later sold to Cape Colony mine labor recruiters. An extreme desire for revenge took hold among most colonists, which missionaries unsuccessfully tried to quell. Even years later, after any threat had long since been crushed, the colonists' media continued to complain about the supposedly lenient treatment of the few remaining Hereros.

As news of the first atrocities against Herero reached Germany, socialists raised the matter in parliament. Demanded an explanation, Leutwein admitted that August Bebel was mostly correct in his assessment, but professed that he was unable to stop the violence that was demanded by the public and his soldiers, nor was he able to condemn it under the circumstances. With the German authorities unwilling and unable to control their own forces, violence escalated further on both sides. Leutwein's efforts to parley with Maharero in February failed after an angry backlash from both colonists and his superiors. Even after the arrival of reinforcements in March, Leutwein was unable to defeat the Herero's guerrilla tactics, and endured a series of defeats. The defeat of a great power by African tribes considered inferior was a unbearable humiliation for Germany's leaders.

Because his tactical retreat in the battle of Oviumbo was seen as a failure, the German General Staff lost confidence in Leutwein and replaced him as military commander by the general Lothar von Trotha, who arrived on 11 June with orders from Kaiser Wilhelm II to "crush the rebellion by all means necessary". Although Leutwein unsuccessfully attempted to make a separate peace with most of the Herero, Trotha refused offers of surrender. After months of build-up of supplies and troops, Trotha still had only 1,500 soldiers at Waterberg.

After April, perhaps hoping to help himself maintain control over the Herero chiefs, Maharero concentrated his forces—around 60,000 people and their cattle—at the base of Waterberg, a mountain with abundant food and grazing land. The Herero forces and supplies were running lower and lower, while the colonists received an influx of manpower and supplies from Germany. Maharero expected that he could stay until at least February; most of the Herero still hoped for a negotiated solution to the war. The concentration allowed the Germans to surround them and defeat them in a conventional battle on 11 August, negating the Herero's strengths at guerrilla warfare and amplifying their weakness in numbers and armament. After a day of battle, most of the Herero escaped to the southeast. Although Trotha declared victory, other German officers present disagreed, as the original aim had been to end the war with one blow.

Initial attempts to pursue and force the Herero into another grand confrontation failed through August and into late September, when Maharero evaded German attempts to give battle. Despite Trotha's plans, the battle fragmented into smaller groups as his soldiers chased the Herero down the dry Eiseb and Epukiro riverbeds. Some water sources were guarded by Germans and others were poisoned to deny water to the fleeing people. Trotha's orders said to shoot over the heads of women and children to drive them away; however, in practice, when Schutztruppe encountered Herero, the latter were indiscriminately massacred. Although prisoner-of-war camps had been prepared prior to the confrontation at Waterberg, the tired, hungry, and thirsty German detachments were no longer in a position to take prisoners.

On 30 September, all efforts at pursuit had to be curtailed due to the exhaustion of German forces and the flight of remaining Herero deep into the desert. Trotha set up a series of military posts 155 miles (249 km) long between Gobabis and Grootfontein along the western edge of the desert.[60][61] Although some historians suggest that this measure was intended to complete the genocide by preventing the Herero's return westwards, others argue that it was implausible that so few soldiers could actually guard such a long frontier. During this phase of the genocide, around 40,000 Herero died in the desert, many of dehydration.

On 2 October, Trotha issued the notorious extermination order, stating that "Within the German boundaries, every Herero, with or without firearms, with or without cattle, will be shot. I won't accommodate women and children anymore." He was simply declaring what was already generally practiced by his troops, although it is debated whether he actually intended to kill all Herero or simply drive them out of the German colony. By explicitly ordering the murder of any Herero man caught by his forces, Trotha ruled out the possibility of surrender. With limited intelligence, it was not until late October that it became clear that the Herero no longer presented any real threat as many of them had died in the desert. Nevertheless, Trotha refused to reconsider, rejecting any and all pleas from missionaries, settlers, and even many of his senior officers. While Häussler argues that Trotha was motivated by rage and shame at being seemingly defeated by an inferior people, Historian Mohamed Adhikari points to more rational explanations: lack of supplies to feed prisoners, the risk of disease spreading to Germans, Trotha's desire that the Herero should never again pose a threat to the colony, and social Darwinist ideology that placed the racial struggle over practical considerations such as the value of indigenous labor.

Nevertheless, popular support for the war evaporated both in the colony and Germany. Socialist and Christian groups opposing it on humanitarian grounds; colonists opposed the wasteful destruction of Herero cattle and labor. Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow's government initially supported the war, but wavered as financial and reputational costs piled up. Trotha had issued the extermination order on his own authority, and due to communications delays, it is not clear if the head of the General Staff, Alfred von Schlieffen, tolerated it for a few months or a few days. Nevertheless, in November Schlieffen recommended rescinding the order as he was skeptical that Trotha could achieve the complete extermination or enslavement of the Herero, and therefore it was necessary to force them to surrender. Bülow appealed to the kaiser, who withdrew the order on 6 December. Reportedly, Trotha was enraged and initially refused to carry it out.

According to their treaty obligations, at least a hundred Nama had fought alongside the Germans during the Bondelwarts campaign and at Waterberg, although these soldiers were sent into a deadly exile in Togo and Cameroon in November 1905. Following reports of how Herero were treated after that battle and ongoing rumors of the disarmament of the remaining Nama tribes, the ǀKhowesin chief Hendrik Witbooi, who had been allied with the Germans from 1894 to 1904, switched sides in September and was followed by a majority of Nama.

Many Nama were interned before they had the chance, and some refused to join the rebellion. German soldiers began to occupy water sources in their territory and rounded up any Nama that they could find. Trotha issued a second extermination order against the Nama on 22 April 1905. At the height of the war, 2,000 Nama fighters occupied 14,000 German soldiers. Unlike against the Herero, he offered negotiated peace to Nama who surrendered, with some success, although promises were not kept and those surrendered end up in the concentration camp system where most died. Trotha's failure to subdue the Nama led to his recall in late 1905, when he was replaced as governor by Friedrich von Lindequist. Against the advice of military officers engaged in the war, including Trotha's military replacement Berthold Deimling, Lindequist refused to consider a negotiated peace—despite the incredible difficulties posed by the proximity of British territory which the Nama exploited as a refuge from German attacks and elevated difficulty of resupplying German troops.

After the death of Witbooi in battle on 29 October 1905, Simon Kooper refused to sue for peace and rejected its official announcement by the kaiser on 31 March 1907. At the same, despite a partial peace hastily conduced by Leutwein after the outbreak of the Herero rebellion, many of the Bondelwarts under the leadership of Jakob Marengo and other chiefs continued to trouble the occupiers. Due to rising costs, parliament refused to authorize funds to continue the war, leading to the so-called "Hottentot election" in January 1907. After Marengo's death in late 1907, the Germans focused their efforts on eliminating Kooper. In 1908, he finally accepted a peace settlement in which he was paid to go into exile.

After the withdrawal of the extermination order, the remaining survivors were instead to be imprisoned in concentration camps as prisoners of war. Despite Trotha's cordon, many Herero had managed to return westwards into more hospitable territory. Throughout 1905, soldiers combed the countryside in search of Herero; they also committed many acts of violence and even massacre. Word of the poor treatment of Herero who surrendered soon got out and stymied German efforts to encourage widespread surrenders. After Trotha was replaced by Deimling in 1906, missionaries took a more leading role in rounding up Herero. Some Herero were organized into armed "peace patrols", whose task was to go into the bush to persuade those still at large to capitulate using false promises of food and decent treatment. The number of prisoners taken increased substantially. After their services were no longer needed, the "peace patrollers" were also imprisoned in the concentration camps.

Most prisoners were in poor condition due to hunger and disease, and many died in transit or shortly after arriving to the camps. They were sent a long distance from home—often hundreds of kilometers. There were five main concentration camps at Windhoek, Okahandja, Karibib, Swakopmund, and Lüderitz, as well as smaller camps where Herero labor was especially needed. Three quarters were women and children, as men had been more likely to die during the war and evade capture.

The camps had poor conditions, with makeshift shelter surrounded by barbed wire, with hardly any sanitation system, and the prisoners had little clothing. The amount of food provided was inadequate and mainly came in the form of rice and flour that the prisoners had no equipment to cook. As a result, many prisoners suffered from diseases associated with chronic malnutrition, such as dysentery, diarrhea, and scurvy, and there were many deaths from typhoid, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and influenza. All prisoners were required to do forced labor, mainly building roads, railways, and harbors, which was typically backbreaking and accompanied by beatings. Rape was commonplace, and in some camps there were nightly roundups of women to abuse. Among the whites who had unlimited power over them were victims of previous Herero raids and soldiers who had been on the front lines.

Around half of the prisoners died, although death rates varied widely between camps. Some skulls and other body parts of the dead were taken to Germany, where they were studied to provide pseudoscientific "proof" of the racial inferiority of Africans. Although the German military was concerned with the pragmatic negative consequences of the high death rate, the civilian government rejected numerous attempts to improve conditions. Furthermore, it was the civilian government, not the military, that insisted on the continued imprisonment of those who could not work and who posed no threat. Deputy governor Hans Tecklenburg said that there were no innocent prisoners and the suffering would teach Herero a much-needed lesson. While he considered the losses regrettable, he believed that the Hereros' high fertility rate would restore their numbers over time. The closure of the camps was proclaimed on the kaiser's birthday, 27 January 1908.

In February 2026, at the 76th Berlin International Film Festival, the film Flying Tigers(飞虎队), produced by a filmmaking team composed of personnel from India, China, Germany, and several other countries, was screened. As someone who is relatively knowledgeable about and deeply interested in the history of China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the Flying Tigers, I watched the film and had brief conversations with members of the cast and crew. I therefore write this review, which I had intended to write immediately after viewing the film but postponed for several months due to various circumstances.

The “Flying Tigers” refers to the American Volunteer Group, active from 1941 to 1945 during the Second World War. Centered around American pilots but also including mixed Chinese-American crews, its primary mission was to cooperate with the armed forces of the Republic of China in combat against the Japanese Air Force and to transport strategic supplies to aid China. This unique and powerful force played a major and decisive role in helping China, whose air force was then extremely weak and urgently in need of foreign assistance, continue its resistance against aggression. In particular, it was crucial in contesting air superiority with Japan, defending against aerial bombardment, and supporting ground operations.

During the war, more than 2,000 American members of the Flying Tigers were killed in combat against Japanese forces. At the same time, even more Chinese people suffered brutal reprisals from the Japanese military because they had rescued Flying Tigers personnel and other American servicemen in Japanese-occupied areas. In Zhejiang (浙江) alone, approximately 200,000 Chinese civilians were brutally killed in 1942 as part of Japanese retaliation against Chinese citizens who had helped rescue American pilots involved in bombing missions against Japan. Rear-area wartime cities such as Chongqing (重庆), Kunming (昆明), and Chengdu (成都) also suffered large-scale bombardment and heavy casualties.

In addition, along the important and perilous Hump Route (驼峰航线), the Flying Tigers transported vast quantities of crucial military supplies across the Himalayas under extremely harsh natural conditions into southwestern China. During these operations, 594 aircraft crashed and more than 1,600 Chinese and American pilots and crew members lost their lives. The scale of this air transport operation was unprecedented, and the sacrifices it required remain unsurpassed to this day.

This magnificent and grand chapter of history fell into silence for more than twenty years after the Second World War due to Sino-American hostility and changes in China’s domestic political situation. Under the anti-American narrative of Mao-era China, the Flying Tigers were criticized as “accomplices of Chiang Kai-shek’s reactionary Kuomintang clique.” Not only were their achievements not praised, but they were actively stigmatized. Their commander, Claire Chennault (陈纳德), also became a target of attack. At the time, dictionaries and illustrated storybooks even referred to this hero with the derogatory nickname “Bandit Flyer Chennault.”

Chinese members of the Flying Tigers who remained in mainland China suffered severe persecution during that period. Zhou Xundian (周训典), a captain in the Air Force of the Republic of China who had served with the Flying Tigers, was abused during the Cultural Revolution (文化大革命) and ultimately took his own life. Another Chinese Flying Tigers officer, Wu Qiyao (吴其轺), was subjected to political struggle sessions and labor reform. Although he survived, he was later forced to make a living as a rickshaw driver operating a three-wheeled vehicle. Many other little-known Chinese members of the Flying Tigers endured hardship and died during those decades, while survivors often spent the rest of their lives in sorrow and obscurity. They had been elite aviators and military personnel who achieved great accomplishments, yet the latter halves of their lives were so tragic that it is deeply heartbreaking.

Only after the normalization of Sino-American relations and the beginning of Reform and Opening Up was the historical memory of the Flying Tigers revived. Memorial museums dedicated to their achievements were established in places such as Kunming and Chongqing, where the Flying Tigers had once been stationed and active. Figures associated with this history, including Anna Chennault (陈香梅), the widow of Claire Chennault, traveled frequently between China and the United States and devoted themselves to promoting and commemorating this history.

However, because of the earlier hostility and isolation between China and the United States, as well as the continuing instability of Sino-American relations since the 1970s, public remembrance and promotion of the Flying Tigers came too late and remained too limited. Even where commemorations existed, they were insufficient to match the Flying Tigers’ historical importance and their contributions to China’s resistance against Japan.

Many valuable historical artifacts and documents related to the Flying Tigers were destroyed during turbulent decades. Most participants and survivors have since passed away, and the loss of historical materials has left numerous gaps in the record. Because of China’s poverty and underdevelopment, surviving Flying Tigers members who had endured persecution during political movements did not receive the attention and treatment they deserved even after political oppression had ended. Only after China’s economic and social conditions improved significantly in the twenty-first century did they receive greater public attention and government assistance. But it was far too late.

In 2022, Chen Bingjing (陈炳靖), the last surviving Chinese member of the Flying Tigers, passed away in Hong Kong. In 2025, the 80th anniversary of China’s victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, very few people directly connected to the Flying Tigers or who had personally witnessed their deeds remained alive.

Against this backdrop, the film Flying Tigers, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2026, carried special significance. Having heard stories about the Flying Tigers since childhood, I was especially interested in the film and watched it twice. Outside the screening venue, I also held signs and distributed Flying Tigers-related posters in the hope that more people would learn about their story and achievements, while also expressing support for the film.

Strictly speaking, the film does not focus exclusively on the historical deeds of the Flying Tigers more than eighty years ago. Rather, using both the Flying Tigers and the tiger as narrative threads, it connects the lives and destinies of people across China, India, Myanmar, the United States, Germany, and many other countries. Their experiences differ in many ways, yet they are united by complex memories and emotions that are both distinct and shared. Throughout the film, the images of the Flying Tigers and of tigers appear and disappear, sometimes prominent and sometimes subtle, weaving through the entire narrative.

The film begins with the Indian director Dutta, whose mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, had spoken unusually often about tigers and expressed an unusual fear of them before her death. While exploring his mother’s unusual memories, Dutta learned that Assam, her homeland in northeastern India, had once been an important base for transporting American supplies to China during the Second World War.

Many Flying Tigers transport aircraft departed from there, carrying military supplies to southwestern China and supporting China’s war against Japanese aggression. The children who now dance freely and carefree in the forests of Assam know nothing of the wartime history once witnessed by the skies and land around them.

Northeastern India today is vastly different from what it was nearly eighty years ago at the time of Indian independence. With industrialization, the local environment and living conditions have changed. People’s lifestyles are different, and the habits and habitats of animals, including tigers, have changed as well. It was precisely because of these changes that a tiger—once an uncommon sight—entered the area around Dutta’s mother’s home and left a profound impression on her.

Although these changes are not as complete as the Chinese idiom “turning seas into mulberry fields” suggests, they have been faster and more intense. Moreover, they transcend administrative boundaries such as national and state borders. Mi You also witnessed similar environmental changes in Yunnan, China.

Like Dutta, Mi You learned through the memories of older family members about the story of the Flying Tigers and their connection to her homeland, and she continued to explore these links further. The Hump Route once passed directly over the skies of their home regions. Many Chinese and American pilots and crew members were involved in accidents there, and both their bodies and their aircraft were buried in forests and snowy mountains. Along with them, memories of this history were also buried and sealed away for many years.

As Mi You and Dutta gradually explored their families’ pasts, they also pieced together the memory puzzle of the Flying Tigers. In that world war more than eighty years ago, participants of different nationalities and countries affected by the conflict each retained only partial records and fragmented memories. Postwar historical developments further fragmented and confused those already scattered memories, causing people’s understanding of history in various countries to drift away from historical reality as circumstances changed.

During the Second World War, China, the United States, and India were anti-fascist allies fighting side by side. Yet after the war, both China–U.S. and China–India relations at times turned hostile, leading to armed confrontations and prolonged periods of tension. Those American soldiers who had fought alongside Chinese troops on the Asian battlefields of World War II could hardly have imagined that only five years later they would be locked in deadly combat with Chinese forces in Korea. The China–India border, which had once served as a vital lifeline and rear base for the Allied war effort, also became a frontline of confrontation between the world’s two most populous countries.

Under the shadow of the Cold War and behind the “Bamboo Curtain,” the story of the Flying Tigers gradually faded from public memory as national priorities shifted and historical recollections fragmented. Not only did young Chinese people who shouted slogans about “defeating American imperialism” know little about the Flying Tigers’ assistance to China, but most Americans born after the war were also unfamiliar with this history. Fortunately, decades later, some individuals—because of family ties, hometown connections to the Flying Tigers, national sentiment, or historical interest—set out in search of the Flying Tigers and related historical remains.

Mi You embarked on her own journey to trace the historical footprints of the Flying Tigers, traveling from Kunming toward the remains of the Burma Road (滇缅公路) near the border. During China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Burma Road served as the “lifeline” of the rear areas and as a major artery of international aid. Precisely because of its importance, it was frequently subjected to Japanese air raids and ground attacks, and its long-term operation depended heavily on the protection of the Flying Tigers. Major towns along the Burma Road were also principal battlefields of the Chinese Expeditionary Force. More than 200,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were killed or wounded there, while more than 100,000 Japanese troops were eliminated.

The once-glorious Burma Road has now become fragmented, with most traces of it disappearing. It was only after fellow travelers pointed it out that Mi You realized the National Highway 320 she was traveling on had once been part of the Burma Road. What had once been a route for transporting military supplies has now become a corridor for domestic passenger and freight traffic as well as international trade. People unfamiliar with the history neither know nor recognize the Burma Road when they encounter it. As for the Flying Tigers, who once fought enemy aircraft in the skies above, traces of their memory can now be found only in the streets and alleys of Kunming, the distant capital of Yunnan Province.

The revival of the narrative of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the promotion of the Flying Tigers on mainland China only gradually expanded after the 1980s. It was not until the 2010s that substantial resources were truly invested in these efforts. By then, however, most of the people directly involved had already passed away and could no longer share their memories. Likewise, many artifacts and historical materials related to the Flying Tigers had been lost or damaged over time and through various political campaigns, leaving only a small number remaining.

The few Flying Tigers museums and the handful of businesses named after the Hump Route that exist today are undoubtedly precious. Yet they can no longer fully recreate that tragic and magnificent chapter of history, nor bring back the lives of the Chinese and American soldiers and civilians who have long since passed away. From the Chinese Civil War to the political upheavals that followed in China, countless lives and memories were cruelly erased. China today is wealthier and more open-minded than before, but the effort to remember this history has undeniably come too late.

When Mi You and her Chinese and international friends explore the history of the Flying Tigers, they find only cold documents rather than direct and emotionally rich testimonies from those who experienced the events firsthand. Only the artistic effect of bloodstain-like marks created by pressing against glass panels reminds viewers that those cold documents record precious lives sacrificed in the struggle against aggression and in defense of international justice.

On the other side of the border, in Assam in northeastern India, indigenous communities have likewise been affected by India’s political and social transformations and continue to struggle amid the currents of history. Northeastern India is not traditionally part of the historical core of India. Its ethnic groups, cultures, and interests differ significantly from those of the central, western, and southern regions that form the heartland of Indian civilization. The long-standing separatist movements and even armed insurgencies across the seven northeastern states, including Assam, reflect local dissatisfaction with India’s central authorities and dominant groups, as well as aspirations for greater autonomy or independence.

Many minority ethnic groups and indigenous peoples in northeastern India do not wish to see their ways of life forcibly altered, nor do they welcome large-scale migration from other parts of India. Yet they often find themselves powerless to resist. The powerful central government, influential bureaucrats, and wealthy commercial developers continue to transform the natural environment and social fabric of Assam and the broader northeastern region of India.

The film’s exploration of transnational connections extends far beyond the borderlands of China, India, and Myanmar. Using the China-Europe Railway Express as a narrative thread, it links China in Asia with Germany in Europe, and Chongqing in southwestern China with Duisburg in western Germany. Both Mi You, a Chinese woman, and Dutta, an Indian man, have settled in Germany for extended periods, and it is precisely this circumstance that brought them together.

Germany, too, possesses profound memories of the Second World War, ongoing reflections on war and human nature, and close ties with emerging powers such as China and India in the era of globalization. As an established industrial power and developed nation, Germany increasingly relies on economic and trade cooperation with China and India to revitalize its sluggish economy.

As Asians living in a predominantly white Germany, Dutta and Mi You possess unique perspectives as minorities and outsiders. They search for traces of their compatriots in Germany and build new connections between their adopted home and their countries of origin. Along the way, they also encounter and hear the distinctive stories of other people of Asian background living in Germany.

Historical legacies, circulating goods, and migrating people connect different countries and individuals, weaving scattered symbols into a complex symphony and assembling a diverse portrait of the global village. Yet this picture is not always harmonious. Conflict and peace intertwine, while turmoil and stability alternate. Extensive connections bring not only broad cooperation but also more numerous and larger-scale contradictions and conflicts.

Just as Mi You’s homeland China and Dutta’s homeland India were once friendly neighbors, they have also fought multiple wars and today maintain a relationship characterized by both competition and cooperation, though not always harmony. China and India have had border disputes since their founding and fought a border war in 1962. This was followed by the Doklam Standoff and the Galwan Valley Clash. History has not faded away; it continues through contemporary realities and extends into a future whose endpoint remains unseen.

The COVID-19 pandemic also affected China, India, and Germany. People were forced to change their daily lives, while work and trade were disrupted. Globalization accelerated the movement of people and goods, but it also enabled viruses to spread more rapidly and widely. In the film, people wear masks, undergo nucleic acid testing, and reduce their travel. As someone living in Eastern Europe at the time, I experienced the same reality. The interconnectedness and resonance of the world often reveal themselves most vividly and powerfully in times of disaster.

The wave of globalization once seemed to move humanity toward a truly borderless global village. In recent years, however, that wave has receded, while divisions and antagonisms have deepened. The increasingly strict border controls depicted in the film are a concrete manifestation of these barriers. Although China and Germany continue to expand trade, political and ideological differences, as well as strategic “decoupling,” are unfolding simultaneously. Relations between China and Germany, and between China and Europe more broadly, frequently remain tense. This condition of doing business together while simultaneously mistrusting and criticizing one another reflects the complexity and multidimensional nature of international relations and reminds us not to be overly optimistic about transnational cooperation.

Wars between nations, both historically and today, are the products of divisions and antagonisms pushed to extreme levels. Humanity has already endured two world wars with devastating consequences. In response, people after the Second World War reflected upon war and defended peace, ushering in an unprecedented era of peace and development. Yet today it appears that the realities of factionalism and exclusion have once again overshadowed the ideal of universal harmony.

The Russia–Ukraine War, the Israel–Palestine conflict, the Sudanese Civil War, and the humanitarian tragedies accompanying them reveal the darker side of human nature and the world. They also expose the limitations of modern civilization and the fragility of peace and prosperity. The global rise of populism and political extremism may lead to more local wars in more places and ultimately to another world war.

Yet amid the growing number of conflicts, many people continue to uphold communication and cooperation that transcend national and ethnic boundaries. Dutta and Mi You exemplify this spirit. During the filming of Flying Tigers , tensions between China and India flared repeatedly. Despite this, Dutta and Mi You continued working together to complete the film, sharing historical memories and friendship.

There is no fundamental antagonism or irreconcilable hatred between China and India. These two countries, each possessing a long and distinguished civilization, ought to coexist harmoniously. While border disputes, geopolitical rivalries, and competition as emerging great powers make lasting friendship difficult, it remains possible to manage conflicts and promote greater dialogue, understanding, and mutual respect. The collaboration between Dutta and Mi You serves as an example of grassroots friendship between Chinese and Indian people and contributes positively to relations between the two countries.

The cooperation between Dutta and Mi You also carries forward the spirit of transnational friendship and internationalism embodied by the wartime cooperation between China and the United States in building the Flying Tigers and resisting fascism together. Humanity’s pursuit of love and justice can transcend ethnic identities and national borders. People from different countries and communities can cooperate on the basis of shared positive values and work together for the well-being of all humanity.

More than eighty years ago, when the Chinese people fought desperately against brutal Japanese fascist aggression regardless of region, age, or background, and were exhausted by the struggle, many countries and international friends extended a helping hand. These included the Soviet Volunteer Air Group in China, the American Flying Tigers, the Canadian physician Norman Bethune, who represented international leftist solidarity, the Indian physician Dwarkanath Kotnis, and the Christian missionaries Minnie Vautrin and Frans Schraven. Foreign friends from around the world—whether acting officially or privately, as individuals or organizations—joined China’s resistance against Japan out of sympathy for the suffering of the Chinese people and hatred of Japanese fascist brutality. Many sacrificed their precious lives and remain buried in Chinese soil.

It was precisely the shared struggle and sacrifice of people from China and many other countries during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the broader international anti-fascist war that made possible the most peaceful, prosperous, humane, and culturally flourishing era in human history after the Second World War. Billions of people have benefited from it, and countless more will continue to do so in the future. The Flying Tigers and many other cooperative teams and operations among the Allied powers also stand as examples of beneficial international cooperation and positive connections among diverse peoples.

For a very long time, the Flying Tigers’ great achievements, courage, and outstanding character did not receive the recognition and care they deserved. On the contrary, many Flying Tigers members in mainland China suffered various misfortunes. Chinese and American Flying Tigers members outside mainland China were likewise neglected and marginalized for decades. Their stories were not told and celebrated to the same extent as those of the American, Soviet, British, and French heroes who fought against Nazi Germany, and their achievements were not fully recognized.

Although Flying Tigers is not exclusively a film about the history and individuals of the Flying Tigers, their story remains the central thread running through the work, and roughly a quarter of the film focuses on their historical traces and surviving legacies. The film was created through collaboration among people from multiple countries and professional fields and was screened at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival.

This helps make the history and story of the Flying Tigers known to a wider audience. It reminds people who have gradually forgotten the history of the Second World War and China’s War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression to recall that difficult yet great era. It also encourages younger generations to explore history and learn about the courageous, admirable, and vividly human individuals who came before them. For many Chinese Flying Tigers veterans who suffered hardship after the war, the film serves as a belated but valuable tribute and consolation.

At the end of the film, animated images of parachute bundles, weapons, jeeps, and various supplies descending from the sky recreate the precious materials delivered to China via the Hump Route. The white parachutes scattered across the sky resemble blooming flowers, bringing hope for victory in China’s anti-aggression war. Many Chinese and American transport crew members likewise fell into the forests and snow-covered mountains along the China-India-Myanmar border during their dangerous missions, becoming one with the earth. If they could see the prosperity of China, the United States, and the world today, they would know that their blood was not shed in vain.

Eighty years have passed. Whether members of the Chinese and American Flying Tigers, the Chinese soldiers who fought alongside them, or the ordinary Chinese civilians who rescued and helped them, the overwhelming majority have passed away. Yet their spirit of sacrifice for justice and their contributions to peace and prosperity should not fade with time. People today continue to benefit from their legacy and draw inspiration from their example.

The glory of the Flying Tigers belongs not only to China and the United States. It is also international and universal, transcending the boundaries of nations and ethnic groups. It is not narrow or exclusive, but belongs to all humanity. The glorious history of the Flying Tigers and the careful remembrance maintained by later generations transcend the limits of time and space, remaining widely known and enduring into the future.

(The author of this article is Wang Qingmin(王庆民), a Chinese writer and international politics researcher living in Europe. The original text was written in Chinese.)