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After the revolt of Bar Kokhba against the Roman Empire (132-135 C.E.), the Judea province was renamed Syria Palaestina by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to detach the Judean province from Jewish identity. In recent history, the area called Palestine includes the territories of the present-day Israel and Jordan (see the map). From 1517 to 1917 most of this area remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. During World War I, in 1917, the British army occupied Jerusalem. On November 2, 1917, the British foreign secretary Arthur James Balfour issued the Balfour Declaration for "the establishment in Palestine of a...

This will be short because it really does not need much comment. In fact, this is so absurd that I am just starting with the reference document because I am concerned no one will believe it. Here it is: Spanish Flu Gof 2.12MB ∙ PDF File – Read now Yes, that is right, Fauci and crew are now actively performing gain-of-function (GoF) work and infecting primates with the Spanish Flu. For those of you that are unaware, GoF does not have a single agreed upon definition but, as it relates here, is essentially the modification of the Spanish Flu virus...

With all the controversy about gain-of-function research and all the concerns about how dangerous it is, you might think that scientists have stopped doing that kind of work.Well, no.In the latest news, a team of scientists in Canada and the U.S. report that they have re-created the 1918 influenza virus and used it to infect macaques. Let’s be clear here: the 1918 flu vanished from the Earth, long ago. It’s simply not a threat, or it least it wasn’t, until someone figured out a way to bring it back.

President Biden was heckled on the White House lawn Monday by gun control advocate Manuel Oliver, whose 17-year-old son Joaquin was killed in a 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla. “Sit down! You’ll hear what I have to say,” Biden said as Oliver shouted over him during a celebration of bipartisan gun policy legislation that Biden signed last month. Oliver’s remarks weren’t clearly audible on pooled video feeds, but Biden pushed back and defended his record on gun control. “We have one. Let me finish my comments,” Biden said to Oliver, before quickly adding, “Let him...

In 1918, Scotus settled the issue of WWI conscription v. the 13th Amendment’s ban on involuntary servitude. Borrowing from Vattel, the court majority wrote in the Selective Draft Law Cases:The highest duty of the citizen is to bear arms at the call of the nation. This duty is inherent in citizenship; without it and the correlative power of the State to compel its performance, society could not be maintained. It is a contradiction in terms to say that the United States is a sovereign and yet lacks this power of self-defense.So, the Scotus boldly defended the survival of society and...

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper has shared a short video showing a convoy of military trucks and armored vehicles moving towards the Russian border. Official Minsk fears that Russia may take advantage of the instability in the country and carry out the Ukrainian scenario to occupy part of the territories ahead of August’s presidential election. The state-controlled Belta news agency said last week that Belarus has arrested dozens of Russian mercenaries after receiving information that more than 200 fighters had entered the country to destabilize it before a presidential election. The mercenaries worked for Wagner, Russia’s best-known private military contractor

In 1918, a novel strand of influenza killed more people than the 14th century’s Black Plague. At least 50 million people died worldwide because of that H1N1 influenza outbreak. The dead were buried in mass graves. In Philadelphia, one of the hardest-hit cities in the country, priests collected bodies with horse-drawn carriages. In the middle of today’s novel coronavirus outbreak, some are turning to the conclusion of past pandemics to discern how and when life might “return to normal.” The Washington Post has received a few dozen questions from readers who want historical context for our current epidemic. But how...

So asks Newsweek's cover, which features a full-length photo of the prime minister his people voted the greatest Briton of them all. Quite a tribute, when one realizes Churchill's career coincides with the collapse of the British empire and the fall of his nation from world pre-eminence to third-rate power. That the Newsweek cover was sparked by my book "Churchill, Hitler and The Unnecessary War" seems apparent, as one of the three essays, by Christopher Hitchens, was a scathing review. Though in places complimentary, Hitchens charmingly concludes: This book "stinks." Understandable. No Brit can easily concede my central thesis: The...

Genome sequencing has given rise to a new generation of genetically engineered bioweapons carrying the potential to change the nature of modern warfare and defense. Introduction Biological weapons are designed to spread disease among people, plants, and animals through the introduction of toxins and microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. The method through which a biological weapon is deployed depends on the agent itself, its preparation, its durability, and the route of infection. Attackers may disperse these agents through aerosols or food and water supplies (1). Although bioweapons have been used in war for many centuries, a recent surge in...

Mask mandates in America didn’t start with the coronavirus pandemic. During the Spanish flu of 1918, government officials ordered similar edicts, their media and nonprofit lackeys shamed the resistant, and health agents in some cases went to fatal extremes to punish the noncompliant, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson reported Monday during his monologue. At the height of the worst pandemic in American history – the Spanish flu of 1918 – cities across the country did something, modern America would find familiar. They issued mandatory mask mandates and punished anyone who didn't comply. "The man or woman or child who will not...

Do you think food is medicine? While Whole Foods imagery touted that in 2019, the coronavirus pandemic that began in Wuhan later that year punctured efforts to convince the public that health is a moral or economic issue - you owe it to your kids to buy overpriced food. SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 pandemic showed that eating expensive onions won't save anyone from anything. What may help save people is remembering the past rather than wishful thinking about the present. In this case, looking back at the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic which killed far more than COVID-19. A new epidemiology...

Around the world, scientists are now beginning to examine samples of the virus with a significant question in mind: Could this strain of the disease cause a global pandemic? This international network of scientists keeps constant watch for good reason. In 1918 and 1919, a flu pandemic killed between 20 million and 40 million people, more than the total death toll of World War I, more in a year than the Black Death of 1347 to 1351. More recently, an H1N1 swine flu pandemic was blamed for more than 284,500 human deaths worldwide between April 2009 and August 2010. So...

As the influenza pandemic swept across the United States in 1918 and 1919, masks took a role in political and cultural wars. The masks were called muzzles, germ shields and dirt traps. They gave people a “pig-like snout.” Some people snipped holes in their masks to smoke cigars. Others fastened them to dogs in mockery. Bandits used them to rob banks. More than a century ago, as the 1918 influenza pandemic raged in the United States, masks of gauze and cheesecloth became the facial front lines in the battle against the virus. ...the masks stoked political division...medical authorities urged the...

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said on Thursday that Anthony Fauci was wrong to liken the coronavirus to the 1918 flu pandemic, calling his remarks “false” and “irresponsible.” Meadows made the comments on Fox News after rebuking White House trade adviser Peter Navarro’s decision to pen an op-ed criticizing Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, which the chief of staff said was “not appropriate.” Meadows went on to argue that not everything that Fauci says is correct. “He was at Georgetown the other day and he suggested that this virus was worse or as bad as the...

Top US public health expert Anthony Fauci warned on Tuesday that the global coronavirus outbreak could be as bad as the 1918 flu pandemic, calling that catastrophe “the mother of all pandemics”, which killed more than 50 million people worldwide. Facing increasing attacks from Donald Trump and White House officials, Fauci spoke to Georgetown University students in Washington on Tuesday about the coronavirus pandemic and its risks to young people. “We have a serious situation here in the United States,” Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Disease, said at the online event. The US has so...

According to an excellent book, The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, the deadliest plague in history—1918-1919—started in Haskell County, Kansas, and one man, Dr. Loring Miner, knew firsthand about it, because many of his patients were dying, but no one would listen. He issued a warning, published in Public Health Reports to alert health officials to this new outbreak and it is the first reference to the outbreak on public record.

A new academic paper produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concludes that the deaths caused by the 1918 influenza pandemic “profoundly shaped German society” in subsequent years and contributed to the strengthening of the Nazi Party. The paper, published this month and authored by New York Fed economist Kristian Blickle, examined municipal spending levels and voter extremism in Germany from the time of the initial influenza outbreak until 1933, and showed that “areas which experienced a greater relative population decline” due to the pandemic spent “less, per capita, on their inhabitants in the following decade.” The paper...

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was the deadliest in human history. But the virus was a part of the historical events of the time. The History Guy recalls the forgotten history of how the events of 1918 shaped, and were shaped by, the pandemic. It is history that deserves to be remembered.

Delta Airlines and American Airlines will suspend all flights from the United States to China, the carriers said on Jan. 31. All flights will be suspended “beginning Feb. 6 through April 30 due to ongoing concerns related to the coronavirus,” Delta said in a statement. “Between now and Feb. 5, Delta will continue to operate flights to ensure customers looking to exit China have options to do so,” the Atlanta-based airline added. The last China-bound flight departing the United States will leave on Feb. 3. The last return flight to the United States from China will leave on Feb. 5....

With the death toll at 83 and counting, the Camp Fire in Butte County ranks as the deadliest wildfire anywhere in the United States in 100 years. But the last time a wildfire killed this many people in America, many of the circumstances were eerily similar: Parched forests. Strong winds. Terrified townspeople killed while fleeing in their cars. Towns wiped off the map. A nation stunned. It happened in 1918 in Northern Minnesota, near Duluth.