Free Republic

The Great War of 1914-1918 was the defining event of our time: a lost generation of millions dead or maimed; mournful widows and orphans; empires toppled and nations shattered; Western civilization damaged; vast treasures sacrificed. And in war's aftermath, democracies stillborn and totalitarianism and vengeance enthroned. How did it happen? Keegan, despite his vast expertise, confesses that even when one knows what happened, it is difficult to explain why. "The First World War is a mystery. Its origins are mysterious. So is its course. Why did a prosperous continent, at the height of its success as a source and agent...

- In the Soviet Union, it was very difficult to obtain firearms legally. All firearms were required to be registered. Being caught with an unregistered firearm was a serious offense. Registration was used by the state to control who was allowed to have firearms, and who did not. The law stemmed from the decree of 1918. From wikipedia.com: The December decree of the CPC of 1918, “On the surrender of weapons”, ordered people to surrender any firearms, swords, bayonets and bombs, regardless of the degree of serviceability. The penalty for not doing so was ten years imprisonment. Communist Party...

Full service of Vespers and Vigil for the Holy Royal Passion Bearers Tsar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, the Grand Duchesses Olga, Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia and the Tsarevitch Alexei who, along with their faithful retainers, were butchered this night 100 years ago by the Communists. (English & Slavonic appx 2.5 hrs)

A flu outbreak is forcing a North Texas school district to shut down for a week because the number of students, teachers, and staff exhibiting influenza-like symptoms continues to soar. The Bonham Independent School District will close its doors on Wednesday, January 17, and reopen a week later, on January 24, after cleaning crews sanitize classrooms, common campus areas, supplies, and school buses, as recommended by state public health officials. Bonham ISD Superintendent Marvin Beaty said he decided to cancel classes after so many students, staff, and faculty members manifested flu-like symptoms. Fourteen percent, or 266, of the school district’s...

Here we see video of the first time the Mark VIII tank from World War 1 is being tested and rolled out for the military to consider whether or not to fund its mass production. More information is in the video text slides.

SYNOPSIS The American military experience in World War I and the influenza pandemic were closely intertwined. The war fostered influenza in the crowded conditions of military camps in the United States and in the trenches of the Western Front in Europe. The virus traveled with military personnel from camp to camp and across the Atlantic, and at the height of the American military involvement in the war, September through November 1918, influenza and pneumonia sickened 20% to 40% of U.S. Army and Navy personnel. These high morbidity rates interfered with induction and training schedules in the United States and rendered...

It was more an embarrassment than a ship. Nearly 20 years old, its single tall funnel poked out above dilapidated decks and scarred paintwork. It was heading for the breaker’s yard until the Haganah, the Jewish underground, bought it. Now, loaded with more than 4,500 Jewish refugees, many of them Holocaust survivors, it was approaching the Palestinian port of Haifa and its moment of destiny. Its commander that July day in 1947 was Yossi Harel, who has died at 90. The ship was the USS President Warfield but Harel had renamed it Exodus 1947. Nearing Haifa it was pursued by...

Nov 18, 2008 19:32 | Updated Nov 19, 2008 10:03 Israel 'occupies' no Arab territories By LOUIS RENE BERES In urgent matters of national survival and geopolitics, words matter. The still generally unchallenged language referring provocatively to an Israeli "Occupation" always overlooks the pertinent and incontestable history of the West Bank (Judea/Samaria) and Gaza. A topographical map of Israel, delineating the 1967 borders. Photo: Courtesy Perhaps the most evident omission concerns the unwitting manner in which these "Territories" fell into Israel's hands in the first place. It is simply and widely disregarded that "occupation" followed the multi-state Arab aggression of...

On the eve of Angela Merkel and François Hollande's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) made a concrete push for Putin's vision of eastern Ukraine. The self-proclaimed, largely unrecognized DPR moved closer to unifying with the other region that has forcefully broken away by declaring itself the legal successor of a 1918 self-proclaimed Soviet republic. "We, the deputies of the Donetsk People's Republic, aware of our responsibility before the past and paving the road for the future, proclaim the continuation of the tradition of the Donetsk-Krivoy-Rog Republic and announce that the state of Donetsk...

The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before. In the decade before World War I, the near-100-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored. The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power...

c. 1918: Humphrey Bogart in the Navy

There is one problem with the entirely justified if self-interested media squawking about the Justice Department snooping into the phone records of multiple Associated Press reporters and Fox News's James Rosen. The problem is that what the AP reporters and Rosen did arguably violates the letter of the law. The search warrant in the Rosen case cites Section 793(d) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code. Section 793(d) says that a person lawfully in possession of information that the government has classified as secret who turns it over to someone not lawfully entitled to posses it has committed a crime....

1918: Amanda Uren - Pulling a section of a submarine through New York City

For years historians, epidemiologists, and virologists have been attempting to peel back the cobwebs of time in order to analyze the deadliest pandemic in human history; the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic. John Barry’s The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Greatest Plague in History, has probably done more to reawaken memories of that awful time than any other source, but many gaps in our knowledge remain. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger and David Morens - both researchers at NIAID – have added considerably to our understanding of the H1N1 virus and the events surrounding its emergence. Taubenberger was the first to...

As regular readers in this column know, my reporting senior and lawful sovereign is His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm II. When I finally report in to that great Oberste Heeresleitung in the sky, I expect to do so as the Kaiser’s last soldier. Why? Well, beyond Bestimmung, the unhappy fact is that Western civilization’s last chance of survival was probably a victory by the Central Powers in World War I. Their defeat let all the poisons of the French Revolution loose unchecked, which is the main reason that we now live in a moral and cultural cesspool.

Examination of lung tissue and other autopsy material from 68 American soldiers who died of respiratory infections in 1918 has revealed that the influenza virus that eventually killed 50 million people worldwide was circulating in the United States at least four months before the 1918 influenza reached pandemic levels that fall. The study, using tissues preserved since 1918, was led by Jeffery K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The researchers found proteins and genetic material from the 1918 influenza virus in specimens from 37 of...

9 Jul 10 - Fourteen earthquakes have occurred below Iceland's Mýrdalsjökull glacier during the past 48 hours - one within the last 4 hours. Katla Volcano lies beneath the Mýrdalsjökull glacier. Katla Volcano usually erupts every century, says Iceland's President Olafur Grimsson. and the last eruption was in 1918. "The time for Katla to erupt is coming close." "I don't say if, but I say when Katla will erupt," Grimsson says. "We have been waiting for that eruption for several years." "It can create, for a long period, extraordinary damage to modern advanced society."

Results from 34 swine flu victims in New York were released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a December 7 bulletin. The swine flu symptoms and effects on the lungs of the victims were similar to the effects of the 1918 Spanish flu, which had an extremely high mortality rate around the world. Other reports of H1N1 infections deep in the lungs have been reported around the world, including Ukraine, China, Brazil, Norway, and the United States, in Iowa and Utah. These infections have been linked to a change in the receptor binding domain of the virus. Swine...

The Great Influenza pandemic killed as many as 100 million worldwide when the global population was less than a third of what it is today. It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years, more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages in a century. It didn't single out the very young and the very old. Half those who died were young people in the prime of life - in their 20's and 30's. By a bizarre and unprecedented stroke it turned the immune system itself into a killer. Two-thirds...

Officials feared mass hysteria in major cities. Citizens were urged to stay indoors and avoid congested areas.