History in Pics

Berlin Wall Comes Down

Fall of the Berlin Wall, November 1989.

The Berlin wall and the guarded border between east and west Germany were first established in the 60s when East Germany’s leaders were worried their population might flee the country and damage their hold on political power (ostensibly they called it the “anti-fascist protective wall”). East Germany’s history was closely tied to USSR and their foreign politics, and relationship with the West strongly depended on what Russian leadership dictated.

In the late 80s, before the opening of the German border, the entire Eastern Bloc was in motion. Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika politics were essentially the opposite of Brezhnev’s doctrine of suppressing independence movements in the satellite states (such as the Prague Spring in 68). In Spring 89, Poland changed leadership, Hungary was in the process of opening its borders to Austria, Czechoslovakia opened its borders to West Germany: The Iron Curtain fell.

While East Germany was reluctant to change, its citizens were still allowed to travel to the other Soviet states, and many took their chance and fled via Hungary and Czechoslovakia, starting in Summer 89. As opposed to their neighbors, the SED (“Socialist Unity Party of Germany”) was firmly against reform, so citizens took to the streets on September 89. These peaceful Monday Demonstrations, which started in Leipzig and spread to Berlin and most major cities in the GDR and persisted until the fall of East Germany. The demonstrations, impending economic collapse and pressure from Czechoslovakia to do something about the masses of citizens fleeing through their territory, brought the party in disarray and forced them to make concessions. They drew up a plan of slow and gradual structural stage, which would include independent parties and the opening of the borders.

You have to imagine this as an extremely chaotic development; the party changes leadership in October, about half a million people on the streets of Berlin alone, a whole bunch of important people step down, and nobody really knows what’s happening. On November 9. 1989, the party holds a live press conference to announce their plans for gradual change. To the question when exactly these changes will take effect, the spokesperson mistakenly answers “as of right now”. German citizens rush to the wall, demanding their right to cross the border; border personnel hadn’t been informed, but they couldn’t just gun down masses of people. So they opened the border, ignoring all protocol. It would take a bit longer until the Germany was reunited, but the process started overnight because some spokesperson misunderstood the memo he received.

People in the east were looked down upon, their jobs, savings, normal day to day life were gone over night. Imagine, one day you had a job, felt like a part of society (whether you think it was good or bad..) the next day things were very, very different. Jobs became obsolete overnight. The currency has no value. Not an easy transition for the people involved but you do not hear that. They lost every sense of security, however small it was, overnight. They were crying tears of fear.


Shigeki Tanaka

Survivor of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, Shigeki Tanaka won the Boston Marathon in 1951.

Tanaka was 13 and living 20 miles from Hiroshima at the time of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bombing. He recalled, “We saw a bright light and heard a little noise. But no one thought anything about it at the time. Three days later, we heard the terrible news.”

He laid the groundwork for his career as a marathon runner by running 20 km from Shōbara to a Saijō municipal stadium as a high school student. He was a first-year student at Nihon University at the time of the Boston Marathon.

Tanaka won the marathon racing in tabi-inspired split-toe running shoes made by Onitsuka, which he thought would give him better traction.


Lower Manhattan

First Aerial Photograph of Lower Manhattan, 1906.

Aerial photographs were taken using manned and unmanned hot air balloons and pigeons.


Wilt Chamberlain and Muhammad Ali

Wilt Chamberlain demonstrates his reach to Muhammad Ali, New York, March 10, 1967.

There’s a funny story behind this meeting. At the time of this picture, Wilt sincerely thought he had a chance against Ali in the ring. Wilt asked his people to arrange the fight and so to “hype” it, they arranged this meeting.

Ali heard that while Wilt was confident, he was also a little nervous too. So Ali had arranged for the meeting to be televised with his friend Howard Cosell moderating. Ali insisted on being there first and when Wilt walked out, Ali yelled out very loudly “TIMBER!”. Supposedly Wilt tried to turn around and leave but his handlers coaxed him back out.


Blimp Crash


Blimp crashes due to nuclear test in Nevada, 1957. It was a test blimp. The Navy was considering using blimps to drop nuclear depth charges on enemy submarines. They wanted to know how far away the blimp should be to survive after detonation.

Operation Plumbbob was a series of nuclear tests conducted between May 28 and October 7, 1957, at the Nevada Test Site, following Project 57, and preceding Project 58/58A. It was the biggest, longest, and most controversial test series in the continental United States.

The operation consisted of 29 explosions, of which only two did not produce any nuclear yield. Twenty-one laboratories and government agencies were involved. While most Operation Plumbbob tests contributed to the development of warheads for intercontinental and intermediate range missiles, they also tested air defense and anti-submarine warheads with smaller yields. They included forty-three military effects tests on civil and military structures, radiation and bio-medical studies, and aircraft structural tests. Operation Plumbbob had the tallest tower tests to date in the U.S. nuclear testing program as well as high-altitude balloon tests. One nuclear test involved the largest troop maneuver ever associated with U.S. nuclear testing.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. I find it amusing how people talk about the Nazi’s like the christians haven’t done the same thing during the Inquisition and the crusades. Nazi’s are still reviled, yet christians are popular? Make a choice, hypocrites, or shut the he!! up.

    1
    • You clearly know nothing about the Crusades or the Inquisition.

      The Spanish Inquisition, though draconian by our standards, was actually more lenient, and ended in more not guilty verdicts, than the civil courts run by the King and his government. Most of the Inquisition’s horrors were played up by English Protestants as propaganda, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I when a Spanish invasion seemed imminent.

      And the Crusades were a response to several centuries of Islamic incursions into Christian lands. The First Crusade began because Seljuq Turks conquered half the Byzantine Empire and began slaughtering Christian pilgrims on the road to Jerusalem. Infamous battles, like the Massacre of Jerusalem, were indeed brutal, but were, in fact, entirely common in the warfare of the Middle Ages. Everyone acted the same way. Not two hundred years later, Muslim armies would commit atrocities in Georgia and Turkey that were far greater than the deaths at the hands of Crusaders, and razed the city of Jerusalem to the ground so no one would want it.

      Also, look at you, edgelord. You can say Hell, your mom’s not going to find out.

      11
      • Thank you for this information! I wish people would research thing for themselves and there would be a lot fewer problems in this world. People still believe in propaganda still today. Just turn on the TV, it is everywhere. And also, Christianity has been under constant attack since it’s inception, so it’s no surprise that evil will show it’s face in this thread:(

        986
      • Muslim armies still commit atrocities against Christians still to this day. And I’m not saying all Muslims are bad people, because they are not. There are radicals in most every religion and always will be sadly.

        887
    • Really, how far back you want to go? It is true that crimes of this nature have been committed since the dawn of time. However, this does not justify the crimes committed by the Nazis and their allies. Those criminals earned their fate. And, those who support their ideals will also get their appropriate Justice.
      BTW, the Spanish Inquisition executed 39 person at the pyre, 2 of them in effigy. Lord Calvin executed 6,000, including the Jesuit priest that discovered our circulatory system.

      788
    • The ability for humans to inflilct suffering on others is born out of weakness and lack of insight in the individual, and fostered by the flaw in all of us as a group, in our inability to create a society which is a product of the finest of our knowledge, in justice, equity, compassion, creative will, and love for each other. Our tragedy is that we are lost in a sea of competing ideologies, political contests, hidden schemes to control wealth, religious traditions, and power struggles, while the simple truth blunders on waiting for catastrophe to shape us, while the gift of choice is ignored.

      4
    • The thing is, Nazis were Christians and German Christian Democratic party with the help of a Vatican and the German Pope of the time helped elect Hitler to power.

      781
      • Yes, The whole world mostly approved of hitler until they didn’t. Big difference. He was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And then he pounced!:( The ultimate deceiver and devil incarnate!

        797
    • The Christian’s held inquisitions a 1000+ years ago and the Germans 80 years ago. There is no moral equivalence. Who do be blame for the 100,000 + fentanyl deaths every year in America? The human race is very flawed but no as flawed as our Government!👎🆘🤯

      0
  2. Having just looked up the total deaths during the inquisition, it seems to vary from 30,000 up to the millions. Though we cannot arrive at accuracy, we do know that 50,000,000 people died in the world wars recently, and no one was a victor! German fascism rose out of a frustrated Germany burdened with debt after the first world war. We are now burdened with debt once again, and the arms makers are itching for excuses to use them, so lets be careful eh? As to Arabs and terrorism, the school kids recently blowing off their immaturity are catching up to terrorist executions of innocents as we speak, but few are seeing the real ill behind all this. Since our churches are proving to be little more than international pedophilia rings, where are the moral arbiters of the modern age? You certainly cannot look to the governments, muslims, christians or fascists for that can you??

    2
    • Hitler’s ideology is very much still alive. There are direct ties with Margaret Sanger Associates having direct ties to Nazi figures who served directly under Hitler and where involved in the creation of Planned Parenthood . So, technically, Hitler is still very much so still murdering innocent human beings. If you don’t believe me it is documented and confirmed.

      818
  3. Easier said than done folks.
    From a ‘Black-Op’s point of view…while attached to a 12 man Force Recon team, we were attracted by a slight buzzing noise that as we got closer, it, of course, got louder.
    Being attracted by the sound of over a billion flies surrounding the strung up corpses of over 300 people that were tied to cross-post in an ‘X’ fashion and skinned alive from the neck to their crotch with the skin hanging down past their calves…pretty much says it all.

    843
  4. People don’t understand how horrifying it can be up front and personal. I respect everything about what your job is and was if that’s the case. I wish more people knew what it takes to keep us all free and from being slaughtered by our enemies.

    1047

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