r/AllThatsHistory

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

The First Liberian Civil War began on 24 December 1989 when Charles Taylor, a former government official and commander of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) rebel group, invaded Nimba County from the Ivory Coast to depose Doe. After intense fighting and atrocities committed by all sides, the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia, a breakaway rebel group led by Prince Yormie Johnson, captured and murdered Doe on 9 September 1990. In May 1991, a group of Liberian politicians and AFL veterans who had fled to Sierra Leone, mostly Krahn or Mandinka, founded the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) rebel group to retake control of Liberia from the NPFL. By c. 1993, Blahyi had joined the ULIMO, which at the time was engaged in an offensive to capture Monrovia from NPFL forces. In January 1993, ULIMO fighters in Sierra Leone took advantage of fighting between the NPFL and ECOMOG peacekeepers to begin attacking the former.

As a ULIMO warlord, Blahyi formed his own militia of several dozen fighters known as the "Naked Base Commandos" or "Butt Naked Brigade", most of whom were children as young as nine. Operating around the Monrovia area with his unit, Blahyi became known for wearing only shoes and magic charms, and eventually adopted the nom de guerre "General Butt Naked". His fighters also followed his patterns of dress, which Blahyi, in line with his "distorted emulation of animist tradition", believed could make one immune to bullets. To fund his wartime activities and secure a steady supply of drugs for his fighters, Blahyi allegedly traded locally mined diamonds and gold to Mexican drug cartels in exchange for guns and cocaine. He conscripted many of his fighters, and according to some accounts laced the food he fed them with cocaine along with showing them Jean-Claude Van Damme films and "[explaining] to them that killing people was a game" in an effort to "uproot the fear of death".

During the conflict, Blahyi and his fighters perpetrated numerous atrocities, although the exact extent of the crimes they committed have been the subject of dispute. He has frequently discussed the alleged atrocities he perpetrated, which according to Blahyi included murders, cannibalism and human sacrifice. Blahyi has repeatedly estimated that the Naked Base Commandos were ultimately responsible for 20,000 deaths, a claim which has come under criticism; Mohammed Toure, a fellow Liberian warlord who personally witnessed him in combat, acknowledged that Blahyi was a "notorious killer" but argued that he "couldn't even reach one thousand [deaths]—it's not possible." Nicholai Lidow, an independent scholar who wrote his doctoral dissertation at Stanford University on Liberian rebel groups, stated in an interview with The New Yorker that as Blahyi commanded at most 40 fighters for roughly three years, it was unlikely that he was responsible for 10% of the war's death toll.

In late 1993 or 1994, ULIMO, partly due to ethnic tensions, split into two rival factions: ULIMO-J, which was led by Roosevelt Johnson, and ULIMO-K, which was under the command of G. V. Kromah. Blahyi supported ULIMO-J, which funded him and his fighters. On 6 April 1996, the NPFL and ULIMO-K, which had both allied with each other, launched an operation to arrest Johnson in his Monrovia residence, "leading to one of the most ferocious battles of the war".[ Blahyi and other ULIMO-J warlords resisted the operation, and one bystander witnessed him standing atop a truck during the battle, holding an assault rifle with one hand and the severed genitals of a man in his other hand. A ceasefire ended the fighting after hundreds of people were killed.

Blahyi claimed to have received a vision of Jesus in July 1996, which he credited with ending his involvement in armed conflict. In his autobiography, he wrote that the incident occurred after he had murdered a three-year-old girl and cut out her heart: "When I looked back, I saw a man standing there... who told [me] 'Repent and live, or refuse and die.'" He left his unit, leaving his fighters to fend for themselves, and started sleeping in one of the pews of a local church. The church's pastor summoned his congregation, and together they prayed to God, requesting him to cure Blahyi of his "demonic powers". Blahyi subsequently went to see his superiors in ULIMO-J, handing over his weapons and charms and stating that "My new Commander is Jesus Christ."

After abandoning his unit, Blahyi began working as a bodyguard for a local bank official before becoming an evangelical street preacher, selling cassettes of his sermons on Monrovia's streets with the message of "If God can save me, He can save you, too". In 1997, the war ended, and Taylor won that year's presidential election, with one of his campaign slogans being "He killed my Ma, he killed my Pa, but I will vote for him." Once in office, Taylor used the Liberian military to persecute his former wartime enemies, including Blahyi, who fled to Ghana in 1999 and settled in a refugee camp. In the camp, he learnt to read and write English, studying the Bible and delivering sermons. In 1999, he founded the "End Time Train Evangelistic Ministries". In August 2003, Taylor stepped down as president; his administration had been collapsing due to the Second Liberian Civil War that various anti-government rebel groups had waged since 1999, and Taylor's decision ended the conflict.

In 2007, Blahyi founded "Journeys Against Violence" (JAV), a non-governmental programme intended to rehabilitate veterans of the Naked Base Commandos and other Liberian militia units. As noted by The New Yorker, JAV was marked by nepotism; Blahyi's half-brother was employed as the programme's supervisor, his mother was employed as its cook and one of JAV's official drivers was Blahyi's cousin. At some point, JAV began renting a house in the Monrovia suburb of Chocolate City as a residence for those who had joined its programme, and a series of "Ten Commandments" were drawn up for them; these included abstaining from drugs, alcohol, sex and fighting along with participating in daily prayers. As of 2016, the official JAV residence consisted of three small bedrooms "crammed with bunk beds". Activities for the programme's enrollees have included driving lessons, farming and bricklaying. The number of enrollees was stated to be 18 in 2016, rising to 48 in 2017.

In January 2008, Blahyi returned to Monrovia and became the first former Liberian warlord to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which had been established by the Liberian government in May 2005 to investigate atrocities committed during both Liberian civil wars. Most of the former warlords who had been called on to testify by the commission, including Taylor and Prince Johnson, had refused to do so as the TRC lacked the authority to force any of them to testify. During Blahyi's testimony, which was broadcast live across Liberia on both television and radio, he recounted his alleged wartime actions and atrocities to the "enthralled" commission, which challenged few of his claims. A 2009 report published by the TRC recommended 38 people for prosecutorial amnesty, including Blahyi. As of 2016, most of the report's recommendations have not been implemented, and The New Yorker noted that such a decision is unpopular among the Liberian public.

The testimony, which quickly became front-page news in Liberia, resulted in Blahyi achieving global fame. The Liberian public's reaction to his testimony was mixed: while many condemned his actions and perceived his turn to street preaching and founding of JAV as a cynical attempt to avoid government prosecution, others forgave him either due to their Christian beliefs or because they thought that forgiveness was "the only way forward for the country". As the only warlord to speak openly about his wartime actions, Blahyi's public contrition "satisfied a deep need" and launched his career as a showman. In the aftermath of his testimony, he was interviewed by journalists around the world and featured in a 2010 Vice News travel documentary titled "The Vice Guide to Liberia", which has been viewed millions of times on YouTube. Several American evangelicals who viewed the documentary later contacted Blahyi and supplied funds to JAV, along with helping to publish his autobiography.

Leaders who achieve great success in history are often hailed as idols.

Some stand out for their unbelievable mindsets. Others make a name for themselves with superhuman endurance and athletic abilities.

Well, do you think a "half-man" could ever join the ranks of these idols?

A warrior missing an arm, without a leg, and lacking an eye...

It might seem impossible for such a man to win a victory. You might even say, "A victory? This guy wouldn't even be able to survive daily life!"

But he lived.

And he etched his name into history in golden letters.

Admiral Blas de Lezo, one of the greatest figures in Spanish naval history, inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the British, who possessed a massive fleet, at Cartagena de Indias in South America.

This defeat was so humiliating that speaking, writing, or even remembering this battle was practically banned in Britain.

If you are ready, let's take a closer look at the life of that legendary Spanish missing an arm, a leg, and an eye.

Blas de Lezo was born in 1689 in the seafaring town of Pasajes, in the Basque region of Spain.

Throughout history, the Basque region was the place that provided the Spanish navy with its toughest ocean sailors, most fearless admirals, and master shipbuilders.

Lezo's parents were also at the very center of this deep-rooted maritime culture.

The family belonged to the class known as "Hidalgo" in the Spanish social structure.

Unlike the nobles in Madrid, they weren't an incredibly wealthy family known throughout the kingdom. However, they held a highly respected nobility on a regional level.

The fact that Blas de Lezo rejected a comfortable nobleman's life at just 12 years old to join the French navy and set sail was a direct result of this deep-rooted heritage from his parents.

Even though the fearless admiral spent a significant part of his life at sea, he managed to build a large family.

In 1725, while serving in Lima, the capital of Peru, he married a noblewoman named Josefa Pacheco de Bustos.

Josefa belonged to one of the region's respected and wealthy families.

She became his greatest spiritual supporter during his endless campaigns and sieges.

The marriage of Josefa and Blas de Lezo brought exactly 7 children into the world.

As his duty stations changed, the admiral tried to keep his family with him as much as possible.

The Spanish sailor gained his first experience of the battlefield at the age of 15 during the Battle of Vélez-Málaga.

While fighting against the British and Dutch fleets, a cannonball tore off his left leg below the knee.

There was no anesthesia in the medicine of that era. As surgeons amputated what remained of his leg and cauterized the stump, he endured the operation without letting out a single scream.

This missing leg was the first gift the war gave him, but... it wouldn't be the last.

Just three years later, while defending the fortress of Toulon, a piece of shrapnel pierced his left eye.

He lost his eye completely, but he never stopped fighting.

When he turned 25, he plunged into battle with the ship he commanded, this time at the Siege of Barcelona.

During the conflict, a musket bullet struck his right arm. Although the arm wasn't amputated, it remained completely paralyzed and useless.

Blas de Lezo, in the prime of his youth, was now a man with no left leg, a blind left eye, and a useless right arm.

To mock him, his enemies gave him the nicknames "Mediohombre" (Half-Man) and "Pata de Palo" (Pegleg).

But he wore these wounds like medals of honor, transforming into the most feared tactical genius of the Spanish navy.

And it was thanks to a battle in 1741 that this brilliant commander became a legend in the royal courts of Europe.

During the conflicts known as the "War of Jenkins' Ear," Britain sent a massive fleet to the heart of the Spanish Empire, Cartagena de Indias in South America.

The numbers were terrifyingly disproportionate for a commander.

The British, under the command of Admiral Edward Vernon, had 186 ships, over 2,000 cannons, and nearly 29,000 soldiers.

This armada was even more magnificent than the famous Spanish Armada of 1588, and it was one of the largest naval forces history had ever seen up to that day.

The Spanish, on the other hand, had only 6 ships and 3,000 soldiers.

Vernon was so confident of victory that, while the siege had barely begun, he sent a message to King George II of Great Britain: "We have won, Cartagena has fallen."

With the news spreading, celebrations erupted in the streets of London.

The British mint even struck thousands of "victory medals" showing Blas de Lezo kneeling before Vernon with the inscription "The pride of Spain humbled by Admiral Vernon" and distributed them to the public.

However, things did not go as expected.

For Blas de Lezo, fighting in the open sea was literal suicide. So, he shaped the battlefield according to his own rules.

He intentionally sank his 6 ships in the narrow channels at the harbor entrance. Thus, the massive British ships couldn't enter the bay and remained out of range.

The Spanish admiral also masterfully played the card of the region's harsh geography and the approaching "rainy season."

Unfamiliar with the dense jungles and swamps, the British infantry fell victim to diseases like yellow fever, malaria, and dysentery as the war dragged on.

The final blow came with a night assault launched on the San Felipe Fortress, which resulted in heavy casualties for the British.

When the British infantry launched the assault, they realized the trenches dug by Lezo's orders had been deepened. The climbing ladders they brought with them were simply too short.

Because of this, the British soldiers trapped at the base of the walls helplessly perished under relentless Spanish fire.

After weeks of siege, the British were forced to retreat, losing their ships and thousands of soldiers.

The famous curse uttered by Admiral Vernon as he retreated became the sentence that best summarized the situation of the enemy.

"God damn you, Lezo!"

When the British fleet returned to London in tatters, a massive shock ensued.

Those "victory medals" the public wore around their necks became the biggest laughingstock in history.

The shame was so great that the British government implemented an unprecedented state censorship.

Discussing this defeat within the borders of Britain, writing about it in newspapers, and highlighting it in naval records were effectively suppressed.

Unfortunately, Admiral Blas de Lezo, who shattered one of the greatest fleets in history, couldn't enjoy this victory for long.

Due to an illness he caught during the war and the wounds he had sustained, he passed away on September 7, 1741, just months after the victory.

After the admiral's death, the Lezo family suffered great hardships.

Due to political conflicts with Sebastián de Eslava, the civilian governor of Cartagena, the name of the admiral and his family was unjustly discredited.

When the governor's plots were exposed, the respect and honor owed to the family and the legendary name were personally restored by King Charles III of Spain.

Today, frigates bearing his name still sail the seas, keeping his legacy alive.

History has given us legendary sailors such as Marcus Agrippa, Horatio Nelson, and even "Captain Jack Sparrow" in history.

But Blas de Lezo left us an unforgettable legend...

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

By 1964, the Léopoldville government, supported by Western powers, was gaining a foothold in its fight to suppress the communist-backed Simba rebellion. Fearing an inevitable defeat, the rebels resorted to taking hostages of the local white population in areas under their control. On 28 October the Simba rebels arrested all Belgians and Americans in Stanleyville. Several hundred hostages were taken to Stanleyville and placed under guard in the Victoria Hotel.

The Léopoldville government turned to Belgium and the United States for help. In response, the Belgian army sent a task force to Léopoldville, airlifted by the U.S. 322nd Air Division. Washington and Brussels worked jointly on a rescue plan. Several ideas were considered and discarded, and all attempts at negotiating with the Simbas had failed.

The Belgian task force was led by Colonel Charles Laurent. On the early morning of 24 November 1964, five American C-130 Hercules planes dropped 320 Belgian paratroopers of the Paracommando Regiment onto the airfield at Stanleyville. Once the paratroopers had secured the airfield and cleared the runway they made their way to the Victoria Hotel, prevented Simbas from killing most of the 60 hostages, and evacuated them via the airfield.

At 7:00 hrs, the hostages at Residence Victoria were rounded up by the Simba guards and ordered into the street. Around 50 of them had barricaded themselves in their rooms, after having heard the order on Radio Stanleyville at 6:30 to kill all foreigners, but most obediently moved into the street, as they were heading for the airfield. After a short march, when the Simba rebels got word that the airport of Stanleyville was now under Belgian control, the hostages were ordered to sit down in the street.

After a few minutes, when heavy firing was heard nearby, some of the Simbas opened fire on the seated Belgians and Americans. The Paracommandos intervened and stabilized the situation by killing and/or driving away the Simbas. Of the 250 hostages gathered by the rebels, 18 were dead, and 40 were heavily wounded.

Paul Carlson, an American medical missionary, was among those killed during the raid. Around 1,600 foreign nationals and 150 Congolese civilians were evacuated. In addition to the direct victims during the raid, several others were killed as a reaction to the arrival of the Belgian troops. Among these victims were many missionaries, such as the Dox brothers. By mid-December, about one month after Operation Dragon Rouge, a total of 185 foreign hostages left behind in various Simba controlled areas of the Congo, along with several thousand Congolese civilians, had been executed by the Simba rebels.

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%81udios\_de\_Arthur\_do\_Val

"Dude, I’ll tell you one thing: I just crossed the border on foot from Ukraine into Slovakia, and man—I swear to God—I have never in my life... look, I’m 35, right? I’ve never in my life, never, *ever* seen anything like this in terms of beautiful women. I mean... the line of female refugees, bro—imagine a line, I don't know... I don't even know, I'm speechless, man... a line of, like, 200 meters or more... just... nothing but goddesses, just goddesses, I mean absolute goddesses. It’s... it’s... it’s just... mind-blowing, man, it’s unbelievable, it’s something... truly extraordinary. Like, if you took the line for the best club in Brazil—the best club at the best time of year—it wouldn't even come close to this refugee line.

Man, it’s like... I’m actually torn up, I’m sad, you know? Because it’s just unbelievable. Oh, right... they call them 'gold diggers,' don't they? I have a friend, Renan—he takes a trip every year (though he hasn't in the last three years). He calls it the 'tour des blondes' [tour of blondes]. What he does is travel to different countries just to hook up with blondes. He’s got a technique down—he’s a pro at this. For starters, he speaks Swedish. The guy is obsessed with it. He gave me some tips—for example, you should never go to coastal cities, and never go to the cities with the best clubs. You have to go to normal cities. That’s where you meet the girls—not at a club, not at the beach, but at the supermarket, the bakery, or... like the hotel receptionist who hit on me here... Oh my God! I was like, 'There’s no way this is happening, right? It’s a lie, it’s a movie, it can't be real...' And yeah, that’s how it is. Those poorer cities are the best ones... it really is still... yeah, that’s how it is.” I swear to God, man, it’s a whole different world. I’m 35 years old, man, and I’ve never experienced anything like this. And I didn’t even hook up with anyone here—I didn’t—but just the feeling of knowing I *could* do it, and feel like someone... well, you know... I’m already buying my ticket to Eastern Europe for next year as soon as I get back to São Paulo.

Bro, I’m losing my mind here—I just went through... there are four customs checkpoints, two little booths in... in each country, man. I swear to you, I counted: there were twelve goddess-level cops—goddesses, absolute goddesses—the kind where you’d... marry them, you know? You’d do whatever they wanted. I’m blown away, man... I don’t even have the words. Four... four of them... four of these chicks were the kind where... man, I can’t even tell you—if she took a shit, you’d wipe her ass with your tongue. Unbelievable, man. As soon as this war is over, I’m coming back here. Oh, and here’s the thing—the real detail: they look at you, man, they really look. And let me tell you, they’re easy because they’re poor, and... my Instagram profile—you know, with all the followers—it works wonders here. I’ll tell the story later. I approached... man... seriously, I didn’t hook up with anyone, but I approached two groups of girls—we didn’t have time—and the ease of it was unbelievable. In São Paulo, if you say "good morning" to a girl, she’d spit in your face, but here they’re super friendly, really cool people. It’s unbelievable, man, unbelievable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

On its arrival at Heathrow Terminal 3 on the day of the disaster, the passengers and their luggage (as well as an unaccompanied suitcase that was part of the interline luggage on the feeder flight) were transferred directly to Clipper Maid of the Seas, a Boeing 747-100 with the registration N739PA whose previous flight had originated from Los Angeles and arrived via San Francisco as flight PA 124, landing at 12 noon and parking at Gate K-14. The plane, which operated the flight's transatlantic leg, pushed back from the terminal at 18:04 and took off from runway 27R at 18:25, bound for New York JFK Airport and then Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. Contrary to many popular accounts of the disaster (though repeated, with reference, below), the flight, which had a scheduled gate departure time of 18:00, left Heathrow airport on time.

At 18:58, the aircraft established two-way radio contact with Shanwick Oceanic Area Control in Prestwick, Scotland, on 123.95 MHz. The transmission was made by Captain MacQuarrie. He transmitted, "Good evening, Scottish. Clipper 103. We are level at 310." The controller responded, "103, you are identified."

Clipper Maid of the Seas approached the corner of the Solway Firth at 19:01, and crossed the coast at 19:02 UTC. On scope, the aircraft showed transponder code, or "squawk", 0357 and flight level 310. At this point, the Clipper Maid of the Seas was flying at 31,000 feet (9,400 metres) on a heading of 316° magnetic, and at a speed of 313 kn (580 km/h; 360 mph) calibrated airspeed. Subsequent analysis of the radar returns by RSRE concluded that the aircraft was tracking 321° (grid) and traveling at a ground speed of 803 km/h (499 mph; 434 kn).

At 19:02:44, Alan Topp, the airways controller at Scottish Air Traffic Control Centre (ATC), transmitted its oceanic route clearance on behalf of Shanwick. The aircraft did not acknowledge this message. Clipper Maid of the Seas's "squawk" then flickered off just slightly northeast of the village of Kettleholm. Air traffic control tried to make contact with the flight, with no response. A loud noise was recorded on the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) at 19:02:50. Five radar echoes fanning out appeared, instead of one. Comparison of the CVR to the radar returns showed that, eight seconds after the explosion, the wreckage had a 1-nautical-mile (1.9 km) spread. A British Airways pilot, flying the London–Glasgow shuttle near Carlisle, called Scottish ATC to report that he could see a huge fire on the ground.

The explosion punched a 50 cm (20 in) hole on the left side of the fuselage and caused the upper deck walls and roof to rip away from the plane within the first few seconds post-explosion. Investigators from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) concluded that no emergency procedures had been started in the cockpit. The CVR, located in the tail section of the aircraft, was found in a field by police searchers within 24 hours. No distress call was recorded; a 180-millisecond hissing noise could be heard as the explosion destroyed the aircraft's communications center. The explosion in the aircraft hold was magnified by the uncontrolled decompression of the fuselage – a large difference in pressure between the aircraft's interior and exterior. The aircraft's elevator- and rudder-control cables had been disrupted and the fuselage pitched downwards and to the left.

Investigators from the Air Accidents Investigation Branch of the British Department for Transport concluded that the nose of the aircraft was blown off and separated from the main fuselage within three seconds of the explosion. The nose cone was briefly held on by a band of metal, but facing aft, like the lid of a can. It then sheared off, up, and backwards to starboard, striking off the number-three engine and landing some distance outside the town, on a hill in Tundergarth.

The fuselage continued moving forward and down until it reached 19,000 ft (5,800 m), when its dive became nearly vertical. Due to the extreme flutter, the vertical stabilizer disintegrated, which in turn produced large yawing movements. As the forward fuselage continued to disintegrate, the flying debris tore off both of the horizontal stabilizers, while the rear fuselage, the remaining three engines, and the fin torque box separated. The rear fuselage, parts of the baggage hold, and three landing gear units landed at Rosebank Crescent. The fuselage consisting of the main wing box structure landed in Sherwood Crescent and exploded, destroying three homes and creating a large impact crater. The 200,000 lb (91,000 kg) of jet fuel ignited by the impact started fires, which destroyed several additional houses.  Investigators determined that both wings had landed in the Sherwood Crescent crater, saying, "the total absence of debris from the wing primary structure found remote from the crater confirmed the initial impression that the complete wing box structure had been present at the main impact."

The British Geological Survey 23 kilometres (14 mi) away at Eskdalemuir registered a seismic event at 19:03:36 measuring 1.6 on the moment magnitude scale, which was attributed to the impact. According to the report, the rest of the wreckage composed of "the complete fuselage forward of approximately station 480 to station 380 and incorporating the flight deck and nose landing gear was found as one piece in a field approximately 4 kilometres (2.5 miles) east of Lockerbie."  This field, located opposite Tundergarth Church, is where the wreckage most easily identified with images of the incident in the media fell, having fallen "almost flat on its left side, but with a slight nose-down attitude."

All 243 passengers and sixteen crew members were killed, as were eleven residents of Lockerbie on the ground. Of the 270 total fatalities, 190 were American citizens and forty-three were British citizens. Nineteen other nationalities were represented, with four or fewer passengers per country. The bodies of seventeen victims – ten passengers (six Americans, three Hungarians, and one Canadian) and seven Lockerbie residents – were never found, and were presumed to have been virtually "vaporized" by the fireball of the impact crater.

Flight 103 was under the command of Captain James B. MacQuarrie (55), a Pan Am pilot since 1964 with almost 11,000 flight hours, of which more than 4,000 had been accrued in 747 aircraft. He previously served three years in the US Navy and five years in the Massachusetts Air National Guard, where he held the rank of major. First Officer Raymond R. Wagner (52), a pilot with Pan Am since 1966 with almost 5,500 hours in the 747 and a total of nearly 12,000 hours, had previously served eight years in the New Jersey National Guard. Flight Engineer Jerry D. Avritt (46), who joined Pan Am in 1980 after 13 years with National Airlines, had more than 8,000 hours of flying time, with nearly 500 hours in the 747. The cockpit crew was based at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Six of the 13 cabin crew members became naturalized US citizens while working for Pan Am. The cabin crew was based at Heathrow and lived in the London area or commuted from around Europe. All were originally hired by Pan Am and seniority ranged from 9 months to 28 years.

The captain, first officer, flight engineer, a flight attendant and several first-class passengers were found still strapped to their seats inside the nose section when it crashed in Tundergarth. A flight attendant was found alive by a local woman, but died before help could be summoned. Some passengers may also have remained alive briefly after impact; a pathologist's report concluded that at least two of these passengers might have survived if they had received medical attention in time.

Thirty-five of the passengers were students from Syracuse University, who participated in the university's overseas program named Division of International Programs Abroad (abbreviated as "DIPA Program" and renamed to "Syracuse University Abroad" in 2006) and were returning home for Christmas following a semester in Syracuse's London and European campuses. Ten of these students were from other universities and colleges (including but not limited to Colgate University and University of Colorado) having collaborative relationships with Syracuse. Several of the students were due to connect to Pan Am Express Flight 4919 to Syracuse Hancock International Airport at JFK Airport later that evening.

Prominent among the passenger victims was the 50-year-old UN Commissioner for Namibia (then South West Africa), Bernt Carlsson, who would have attended the signing ceremony of the New York Accords at the UN headquarters the following day. James Fuller, CEO of Volkswagen of America, was returning home together with marketing director Lou Marengo from a meeting with Volkswagen executives in West Germany. Also aboard were Irish Olympic sailor and management consultant Peter Dix, rock musician Paul Jeffreys and his wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%BCrrem\_Sultan

Hürrem Sultan likely entered the harem around fifteen years of age. The precise year that she entered the harem is not recorded, but it's accepted that she became Suleiman's new favourite concubine around the time he became the sultan in 1520, because their first child was born in 1521.

Hürrem's unprecedented rise from a harem slave to Suleiman's legal wife attracted immense jealousy, acrimony and disfavor not only in the harem, but also from the general populace. By the early 1520s, she had become Suleiman's most prominent consort beside Mahidevran Hatun (c.1500), who was the mother of Suleiman's eldest surviving son. Before devoting himself exclusively to Hürrem and becoming monogamous, Suleiman had followed the precedent of his ancestors and taken a number of concubines when he was a prince but after becoming the sultan, he fell deeply in love with his new concubine, Hürrem.

Marco Minio, who was in Constantinople from September 1521 to January 1522, noted in his official report that Suleiman frequently visited the Old Palace around that time which was interpreted that as a sign of lasciviousness. However, these visits must have been related to the burgeoning relationship between him and Hürrem as by the fall of 1524, it was common knowledge in Constantinople that the sultan spent his nights with the same woman and did not seek other sexual partners. Besides, the sultan having recently lost three of his children – Şehzade Mahmud, Şehzade Murad and Raziye Sultan in the fall of 1521, all of a sudden – must have also paid these visits to closely monitor the rearing and health of his children. For instance, a marginal note in a revenue register records significant sums of money paid by the sultan and his mother to a healer named Abdi Dede for Şehzade Mehmed's recovery from an unspecified illness. Indeed, by 1524, when Suleiman and Hürrem had [three] children, the ambassador Zen could comment that "the Seigneur is not lustful" and that he "remained constant to one woman". According to Luigi Bassano, Suleiman ignored the past custom of the sultans and did not take a succession of concubines; rather, to preserve his faithfulness to Hürrem, he married off, as virgins, nearly all the eligible concubines in his harem. While the relationship between Suleiman and Hürrem deepened through mutual devotion, love and many children, Mahidevran must have maintained a level of prestige as the mother of Suleiman's eldest surviving son. However, in 1526, the ambassador Bragadin reported that the sultan no longer paid any attention to Mahidevran, but concentrated and lavished all his love and affection on Hürrem. Bragadin further reported that, after Suleiman had turned away from her, Mahidevran spent all her time caring for her son who was her "whole joy".

After the birth of their first child in 1521, Suleiman scandalized the harem by renouncing all other sexual partners and marrying off the other concubines to servitors and favorites. Suleiman fathered at least six children by Hürrem in ten years. While the exact dates for the births of her children are disputed, there is academic consensus that the births of her first five children – Şehzade Mehmed, Mihrümah or Mihrimah Sultan, Şehzade Selim, Şehzade Abdullah and Şehzade Bayezid – occurred quickly over the next five to six years. Suleiman and Hürrem's last son, Şehzade Cihangir was born later, around 1531, with what appears to have been a deformity of his shoulder, but by that time Hürrem had borne enough healthy sons to secure the future of the Ottoman dynasty. That Hürrem was allowed to give birth to more than one son was an utter violation of one of the oldest imperial harem principles: "one concubine mother – one son," which was designed to prevent both the mother's influence over the sultan and the feuds of full-brothers for the throne. She was to bear the majority of Suleiman's children. Hürrem gave birth to her first son Mehmed in 1521 (who died in 1543) and then to at least four more sons, destroying Mahidevran's status as the mother of the sultan's only surviving son.

Hürrem's salary was 2,000 akçe a day, making her one of the highest-paid Ottoman imperial women. With respect to stipend, mothers of princes before the reign of Suleiman did not enjoy a status much greater than that of the women that followed beginning from Hürrem: in 1513, as the mother of the heir apparent, Hafsa Sultan received a stipend of 150 aspers a day. The gap between Hafsa's stipend and Hurrem's stipend of 2,000 aspers a day at a parallel point in her career only forty years later further underlines the exceptional nature of Suleiman's treatment of Hürrem. Suleiman's singularity as a sultan in remaining faithful and loving to only one woman and then unprecedentedly marrying her amidst unmatched majestic pomp, made Hürrem to be widely deemed a sorceress who by the use of potions, charms, and magic arts had bewitched and completely captured the sultan's heart and soul.

Especially after the death of Suleiman's mother, Hafsa Sultan, in 1534, Hürrem became Suleiman's most trusted news source. In one of her letters to Suleiman, she informs him about the situation of the plague in the capital. She wrote, "My dearest Sultan! If you ask about Istanbul, the city still suffers from the plague; however, it is not like the previous one. God willing, it will go away as soon as you return to the city. Our ancestors said that the plague goes away once the trees shed their leaves in autumn." Later, Hürrem became the first woman to remain in the sultan's court for the rest of her life. In the Ottoman imperial family tradition, a sultan's consort was to remain in the harem only until her son came of age (around 16 or 17), after which he would be sent away from the capital to govern a faraway province, and his mother would follow him. This tradition was called Sancak Beyliği. The consorts were never to return to Constantinople unless their sons succeeded to the throne.

Remaining in Constantinople, she had already moved out of the harem located in the Old Palace (Eski Saray) and into the Topkapı Palace after her marriage. However, earlier it was often assumed that she and her entourage moved to Topkapı, not because of her marriage but only after a fire in 1541 destroyed much of the Old Palace. Either way, this was another significant break from established customs, as Mehmed the Conqueror had specifically issued a decree to the effect that no women would be allowed to reside in the same building where government affairs were conducted. After Hürrem resided at Topkapı it became known as the New Palace (saray-ı jedid).

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

By 1859, Norton had become completely discontented with what he considered the inadequacies of the legal and political structures of the United States. In July 1859, he issued a brief manifesto addressed to the "Citizens of the Union". It outlined in the broadest terms the national crisis as Norton saw it and suggested the imperative for action to address this crisis at the most basic level. The manifesto ran as a paid ad in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin.

Two months later, on September 17, 1859, Norton hand-delivered the following letter declaring himself "Emperor of these United States" to the offices of the Bulletin:

At the peremptory request and desire of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last 9 years and 10 months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these United States; and in virtue of the authority thereby in me vested, do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in Musical Hall, of this city, on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.

— NORTON I., Emperor of the United States

The paper printed the letter in that evening's edition, for humorous effect, and thus began Norton's whimsical 20-year "reign" over the United States.

Norton issued numerous decrees on matters of state, including a decree on October 12, 1859, to formally abolish the United States Congress. In this same decree, Norton repeated his order that all interested parties assemble at Musical Hall in San Francisco in February 1860 to "remedy the evil complained of."

In an imperial decree issued in January 1860, Norton summoned the Army to depose the elected officials of the US Congress:

WHEREAS, a body of men calling themselves the National Congress are now in session in Washington City, in violation of our Imperial edict of the 12th of October last, declaring the said Congress abolished;

WHEREAS, it is necessary for the repose of our Empire that the said decree should be strictly complied with;

NOW, THEREFORE, we do hereby Order and Direct Major-General Scott, the Commander-in-Chief of our Armies, immediately upon receipt of this, our Decree, to proceed with a suitable force and clear the Halls of Congress.

Norton's orders were ignored by Army and Congress. A decree in July 1860 ordered the dissolution of the republic in favor of a temporary monarchy. Norton issued a mandate in 1862 ordering both the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant churches to publicly ordain him as "Emperor," hoping to resolve the many disputes that had resulted in the Civil War.

Norton then turned his attention to other matters, both political and social. In a proclamation dated August 12, 1869, and published in the San Francisco Daily Herald, he declared the abolition of the Democratic and Republican parties, explaining that he was "desirous of allaying the dissensions of party strife now existing within our realm."

The failure to treat Norton's adopted home city with appropriate respect was the subject of a particularly stern edict that often is cited as having been written by Norton in 1872, although evidence is elusive for the authorship, date, or source of this decree:

"Whoever after due and proper warning shall be heard to utter the abominable word "Frisco", which has no linguistic or other warrant, shall be deemed guilty of a High Misdemeanor, and shall pay into the Imperial Treasury as penalty the sum of twenty-five dollars."

Norton explicitly forbade any form of conflict between religions or their sects, and he issued several decrees calling for the construction of a suspension bridge or tunnel connecting Oakland and San Francisco. Long after his death, similar structures were built in the form of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and the Transbay Tube, and there have been efforts since the 1930s to name the Bay Bridge after Emperor Norton or at least to add "Emperor Norton Bridge" as an honorary name for the bridge.

By 1865 — and for the remainder of his life — Norton lived in a small room on the top floor of the Eureka Lodgings, a 3-story rooming house at 624 Commercial Street between Montgomery and Kearny Streets. The building that housed the Eureka was lost in the earthquake and fires of April 1906. On this site now stands a 4-story apartment building at 650–654 Commercial.

When he wasn't reading newspapers and writing proclamations, Norton spent most of his days as Emperor walking the streets, spending time in parks and libraries, and paying visits to newspaper offices and old friends in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. In the evenings, he often was seen at political gatherings or at theatrical or musical performances.

He wore an elaborate blue uniform with gold-plated epaulettes, at some time given to him secondhand by officers of the United States Army post at the Presidio of San Francisco. He embellished that with a variety of accoutrements, including a beaver hat decorated with a peacock or ostrich feathers and a rosette, a walking stick, and an umbrella. In the course of his rounds, he took note of the condition of the sidewalks and cable cars, the state of repair of public property, and the appearance of police officers. He also often had conversations on the issues of the day with those he encountered.

Caricaturist Edward Jump often depicted Norton with two noted stray dogs named Bummer and Lazarus, giving rise to the rumor that the dogs were Norton's pets. There is no evidence to support this.

Special officer Armand Barbier was part of a local auxiliary force whose members were called "policemen," although they were private security guards paid by neighborhood residents and business owners. He arrested Norton in 1867 to commit him to involuntary treatment for a mental disorder. The arrest outraged many citizens and sparked scathing editorials in the newspapers, including the Daily Alta, which wrote "that he had shed no blood; robbed no one; and despoiled no country; which is more than can be said of his fellows in that line." In response to this widespread backlash, Police Chief Patrick Crowley ordered Norton released and issued a formal apology on behalf of the police force, and Norton granted an Imperial Pardon to Barbier. Police officers of San Francisco thereafter saluted Norton as he passed in the street.

Norton did receive some tokens of recognition for his position. The 1870 U.S. census lists Joshua Norton as 50 years old and residing at 624 Commercial Street, with his occupation listed as "Emperor." It also notes that he was insane. (However, the U.S. Census instructions state "The fact of idiocy will be better determined by the common consent of the neighborhood, than by attempting to apply any scientific measure to the weakness of the mind or will."

During the 1860s and 1870s, there were occasional anti-Chinese demonstrations in the poorer districts of San Francisco, and riots took place, sometimes resulting in fatalities. Starting in the late 1870s, those riots were fomented at rallies on Sunday afternoons at the sandlots across from City Hall. The rallies were led by Denis Kearney, a leader of the anti-Chinese Workingmen's Party of California. At a sandlot rally held on April 28, 1878, Emperor Norton appeared just before the start of proceedings, stood on a small box and challenged Kearney directly, telling him and the assembled crowd to disperse and go home. Norton was unsuccessful, but the incident was widely reported in local papers over the next couple of days.

Norton issued his own money in the form of scrip, or promissory notes, which were accepted from him by some restaurants in San Francisco. The notes came in denominations between fifty cents and ten dollars, and the few surviving ones are collector's items that routinely sell for more than $10,000 at auction.

Throughout his reign, Norton commented on the policies and actions of foreign governments, issuing proclamations and sending letters to foreign leaders in attempts to establish congenial and fruitful relations with them and their countries and, if he felt it necessary, to coax better behavior.

Responding to instability in Mexico, Norton expanded his title to "Emperor of the United States and Mexico" in 1861. In 1862, the French Empire invaded Mexico after the latter was unable to pay war reparations following the disastrous Reform War. Two years later, in 1864, Napoleon III, then Emperor of the French, installed the Habsburg Maximilian I as his puppet ruler. Norton had stopped calling himself "Emperor" of Mexico and added the secondary title "Protector of Mexico" by early 1866. Contrary to the oft-repeated claim that he dropped the title shortly thereafter, Norton continued to identify and sign himself "Protector of Mexico" for the rest of his life.

Norton wrote many letters to Queen Victoria, including a suggestion that they marry to strengthen ties between their nations. That proved futile because the queen never responded.

Norton also sent at least one letter to Kamehameha V, the King of Hawaii at the time, regarding an estate in the Kingdom of Hawaii.

Norton was the subject of many tales. One popular story suggested that he was the son of Emperor Napoleon III and that his claim of coming from South Africa was a ruse to prevent persecution. To have been an illegitimate son of Napoleon III, he would have had to have been conceived when the French Emperor was only eleven; the Emperor's actual illegitimate sons, Eugène and Alexandre, became minor French aristocrats. His legitimate son, Louis-Napoléon, Prince Imperial, died fighting in the Anglo-Zulu War in 1879. Rumors also circulated that Norton was supremely wealthy and was feigning poverty because he was miserly.

Starting a few years after Norton declared himself emperor, local newspapers, notably the Daily Alta California, began to print fictitious decrees. It is believed that newspaper editors themselves drafted the fake proclamations to suit their own agendas. Weary of that, in December 1870 Norton named the black-owned and -operated Pacific Appeal as his "imperial organ." Between September 1870 and May 1875, the Appeal published some 250 proclamations over the signature of Norton I. Historians and researchers who have studied Norton closely generally regard those proclamations as being authentic.

On the evening of Thursday, January 8, 1880, Norton collapsed on the corner of California Street and Dupont Street (now Grant Avenue), across the street from Old Saint Mary's Cathedral, while on his way to a debate at the California Academy of Sciences. His collapse was immediately noticed, and "the police officer on the beat hastened for a carriage to convey him to the City Receiving Hospital," according to the next day's obituary in the San Francisco Morning Call. Norton died before a carriage could arrive. The Call reported: "On the reeking pavement, in the darkness of a moonless night, under the dripping rain ... Norton I, by the grace of God, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life." Two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle led its article on Norton's funeral with the headline "Le Roi Est Mort." (lit. "The King is dead", and the first half of the traditional proclamation of a new king).

It quickly became evident that Norton had died in complete poverty, contrary to rumors of wealth. Five or six dollars in small change was found on his person, and a search of his room at the Eureka Lodgings turned up a single gold sovereign, worth around $2.50. His possessions included his collection of walking sticks, his rather battered sabre, a variety of headgear, including a stovepipe, a derby, a red-laced Army cap, and another cap suited to a martial band-master. There was an 1828 French franc and a handful of the Imperial bonds that he sold to tourists at a fictitious 7% interest. Also found were fake telegrams, including one purporting to be from Tsar Alexander II of Russia congratulating Norton on his forthcoming marriage to Queen Victoria and another from the President of France predicting that such a union would be disastrous to world peace. Also found were his letters to Queen Victoria and 98 shares of stock in a defunct gold mine.

Initial funeral arrangements were for a pauper's coffin of simple redwood. However, members of a San Francisco businessmen's association, the Pacific Club, established a funeral fund that provided for a handsome rosewood casket and arranged a dignified farewell. Norton's funeral on Saturday, January 10, was solemn, mournful, and large. Paying their respects were members of "all classes from capitalists to the pauper, the clergyman to the pickpocket, well-dressed ladies and those whose garb and bearing hinted of the social outcast". The next day, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, under the headline "Le Roi Est Mort," that some 10,000 people had come to view the emperor's body in advance of the 2 p.m. funeral. Notwithstanding the later legend of a "two-mile-long cortege," the Chronicle reported in the same article that people lined the streets for only the first block or two. The emperor's casket was attended by "only three carriages," with no mourners on foot, and there were "about thirty people" at the burial service in the Masonic Cemetery.

In 1934, Norton's remains were transferred to a grave site at Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Colma, California.

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

Born sometime in 1900, Lidiya Pereprygina grew up with a family of five brothers and two sisters, all orphans due to losing their parents at a young age. She was raised in the village of Kureika above the Arctic Circle, near Turukhansk in Krasnoyarsk Krai. Kureika was a hamlet consisting of only eight or ten wooden cottages, with the Perepryginas living in cramped and impoverished conditions, including a filthy floor, broken windows, and only two rooms.

In March 1914, exiled Joseph Stalin and his Bolshevik comrade Yakov Sverdlov were moved to Kureika, living together in an izba before Stalin moved out due to clashes between the two Bolsheviks. Stalin then rented a room from the Perepryginas. In Lidiya's unpublished memoirs, she remembers Stalin as a merry tenant, spending much of his time hunting and fishing with a native khanty named Martin Peterin and attending evening dances or other festivities, singing and dancing.

In 1914, 14-year-old Lidiya and 35-year-old Stalin began living in the same room together, with Lidiya becoming pregnant and giving birth, but their child died soon after. Although relations between exiles and locals were common, the fact that Lidiya was only a teenager and twenty years younger than Stalin sparked controversy among the village, causing the Perepryginas to alert the local authorities. The local gendarme, Laletin, reprimanded Stalin for living with and impregnating a minor, to which Stalin promised that he would marry her when she came of age.

Stalin was ordered to leave Kureika in October 1916, was moved to Monastyrkoe several hundred kilometers away, and in December was transferred from there to Krasnoyarsk, arriving in February 1917. Lidiya gave birth to a second son, Alexander, in 1917. Stalin continued to send letters to Lidiya for some time but when rumor arrived that he had died she married the local peasant Yakov Semyonovich Davydov, who adopted Alexander.

Lidiya's son Alexander was drafted in August 1940, fighting in the Red Army against the Empire of Japan during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in March-August 1945, earning the rank of major and the Order of the Red Star. According to Alexander's son Yuri, Stalin tried twice to bring Alexander to Moscow, but the father and son never met.

After marrying Yakov Davydov, Lidiya had eight more children. The family eventually moved one hundred miles north of Kureika to Igarka, where Lidiya became a hairdresser. She died around 1964 or 1965.

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

Only days after the 1990 Croatian multi-party election, Ražnatović, who was the leader of the Delije (hooligan supporters of the football club Red Star Belgrade), was present at the away game against Croatian side Dinamo Zagreb at Stadion Maksimir on 13 May, a match that ended in the infamous Dinamo–Red Star riot. Ražnatović and the Delije, consisting of 1,500 people, were involved in a massive fight with the home team's football hooligans, the Bad Blue Boys. On 11 October 1990, as the political situation in Yugoslavia became tense, Ražnatović created a paramilitary group named the Serb Volunteer Guard. Ražnatović was the supreme commander of the unit, which was primarily made up of members of the Delije and his personal friends.

In late October 1990, Ražnatović traveled to Knin to meet representatives of the SAO Krajina, a Serb break-away region that sought to remain in FR Yugoslavia, as opposed to the Croatian government that seceded. On 29 November, Croatian police arrested him at the Croatian-Bosnian border crossing Dvor na Uni along with local Dušan Carić and Belgraders Dušan Bandić and Zoran Stevanović. Ražnatović's entourage was sent to Sisak and was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the newly formed Croatian state. Ražnatović was sentenced to twenty months in jail. He was released from Zagreb's Remetinec prison on 14 June 1991. It has been claimed that the Croatian and Serbian governments agreed on a DM1 million settlement for his release.

In July 1991, Ražnatović stayed for some time at the Cetinje Monastery, with Metropolitan of Montenegro Amfilohije Radović. His group of men, fully armed, were allowed to enter the monastery, where they served as security. Ražnatović's group traveled from Cetinje to the Siege of Dubrovnik. On his return from Dubrovnik, he was again a guest at Cetinje.

The Serb Volunteer Guard, also known as "Arkan's Tigers", was organised as an elite paramilitary force supporting the Serb armies, set up in a former military facility in Erdut. The force, led by Ražnatović and Milorad Ulemek, consisted of a core of 600 men and perhaps totaled more than 5,000 soldiers, and it was much feared by the public. Under Arkan's command the SDG massacred hundreds of people in eastern Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It saw action from mid-1991 until late 1995, and was supplied and equipped privately, by the reserves of the Serbian police force or through capturing enemy arms.

When the Croatian War of Independence broke out in 1991, the SDG was active in the Vukovar region, committing crimes against Croat and Hungarian civilians in Dalj, Erdut, Tenja and other areas. After the Bosnian War broke out in April 1992, the unit moved between the Croatian and Bosnian fronts, engaging in multiple instances of ethnic cleansing by killing and forcefully deporting mostly Bosniak civilians. In Croatia, it fought in various areas in SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia. Ražnatović, reportedly, had a dispute over military operations with Krajina leader Milan Martić. In Bosnia, the SDG notably fought in battles in and around Zvornik, Bijeljina and Brčko, mostly against Bosniak and Bosnian Croat paramilitary groups, including killings of civilians.

Ražnatović was favored by the Serbian authorities because as a gangster and a football hooligan he seemed to have no political ambitions and hence posed no threat to the regime of Slobodan Milošević. However, he started to show signs of wanting to move beyond organised crime, founding his own political party, the Party for Serbian Unity, in 1992. He also became the owner of the casino in the Hotel Jugoslavija along with a radio station, a shipping company and a brand of wine named Erdut after the base of the Tiger militia. The SDG served as much of a criminal organisation as a para-military group, and was involved in smuggling petrol into Serbia from Romania and Bulgaria in defiance of the United Nations sanctions imposed on Serbia in May 1992. Ražnatović's petrol smuggling brought him into conflict with Marko Milošević, the son of Slobodan, who from 1994 onwards was said to be trying to monopolise the petrol smuggling. In the summer of 1995, the Serbian state curtailed the supply of arms to the SDG, which was said to have been a punishment for competing with Marko Milošević.

In late 1995, Ražnatović's troops fought in the area of Banja Luka, Sanski Most and Prijedor. In October 1995, he left Sanski Most as the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina reclaimed the city. Ražnatović personally led most of the operations, and rewarded his most efficient officers and soldiers with ranks, medals and eventually looted goods. Several younger soldiers were rewarded for their actions in and around Kopački Rit and Bijelo Brdo. Ražnatović reportedly sent one of his most trusted men, Radovan Stanišić, to Italy to start a relationship with Camorra boss Francesco Schiavone. According to Roberto Saviano, Schiavone eased arms smuggling to Serbia by stopping the Albanian mobsters' blocking of weapons routes, and helped money transfer into Serbia in the form of humanitarian aid amid the international sanctions. In exchange, the Camorra acquired companies, enterprises, shops and farms in Serbia at optimal prices.

Ražnatović has been accused of kidnapping Serb refugees who had fled to Serbia from Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and forcing them into conscription. After Operation Storm in Croatia resulted in the collapse of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and exodus of Serb refugees fleeing to Serbia, the Serbian Interior Ministry rounded up over 5,000 refugees to conscript into the SDG. Military-aged men were forcibly rounded up after arriving in Serbia by local police and then sent to a detention camp in Erdut against their will and without informing their families. Once in Erdut, the refugees' heads were shaved and all valuables were confiscated. The men were then subjected to days of physical and psychological torture from the SDG guards, which included extreme physical exercises, routine beatings, and often being subjected to humiliating acts. Ražnatović had been giving speeches accusing the refugees of being cowards and traitors, blaming them for the loss of RSK. Belgrade's Humanitarian Law Centre has represented over 100 people suing the state of Serbia for forced mobilisation.

In March 1999, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) announced that Ražnatović had been indicted by the Tribunal, although the indictment was only made public after his assassination. According to the indictment, Ražnatović was to have been prosecuted on 24 charges of crimes against humanity (Art. 5 ICTY Statute), grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions (Art. 2 ICTY Statute) and violations of the laws of war (Art. 3 ICTY Statute), for the following acts:

- Forcibly detaining approximately thirty non-Serb men and one woman, without food or water, in an inadequately ventilated boiler room of approximately five square metres (54 sq ft) in size.

- Transporting twelve non-Serb men from Sanski Most to an isolated location in the village of Trnova, where eleven of the men were shot and killed and the twelfth was critically wounded.

- Transporting approximately sixty-seven Bosniak men from Sanski Most, Šehovci, and Pobriježe to an isolated location in the village of Sasina, and shooting them, killing sixty-five of the captives and wounding two survivors.

- Forcibly detaining approximately thirty-five Muslim Bosnian men in an inadequately ventilated room of about five square metres (54 sq ft) in size, withholding from them food and water, resulting in the deaths of two men.

- The rape of a Muslim woman on a bus outside the Hotel Sanus in Sanski Most.

Following Ražnatović's assassination in 2000, ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said she was "confident, however, that other persons who shared responsibility with [him] for his crimes will ultimately be brought to justice."

In the late 1990s, Ražnatović became an isolated figure in Belgrade who rarely went outside without his bodyguards. Between 1995–2000, there were over 500 gangland murders in Belgrade, virtually none of which were solved by the police. A number of the gangsters killed were associates of Ražnatović, which was seen as a sign that he had lost his political protection. Together with his wife, Ražnatović virtually lived in the lounges of international hotels in Belgrade, apparently out of the hope he would not be killed in a place where so many foreign journalists were present.

Ražnatović was assassinated, 15 January 2000, 17:05 GMT, in the lobby of the Hotel InterContinental in New Belgrade, in a location where he was surrounded by other hotel guests. The killer, Dobrosav Gavrić, a 23-year-old junior police mobile brigade member, had ties to the underworld and was on sick leave at the time. He walked up alone toward his target from behind. Ražnatović was sitting and chatting with two friends and, according to BBC Radio, was filling out a betting slip. Gavrić waited for a few minutes, calmly walked up behind the party, and rapidly fired a succession of bullets from his CZ99 pistol. Ražnatović was hit in his left eye and became unconscious on the spot. His bodyguard Zvonko Mateović put him into a car, and rushed him to a hospital; he died on the way.

According to his widow Svetlana, Ražnatović died in her arms as they were driving to hospital. His companions Milenko Mandić, a business manager, and Dragan Garić, a police inspector, were also shot dead by Gavrić, who in turn was shot and wounded by Mateović. A female bystander was also seriously wounded in the shootout. After complicated surgery, Gavrić survived, but was paralyzed from the waist down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goi%C3%A2nia_accident

The Instituto Goiano de Radioterapia (IGR), a private radiotherapy institute in Goiânia, was one kilometre (0.6 mi) northwest of Praça Cívica, the administrative center of the city. In 1985, IGR moved to new premises, but left behind a caesium-137-based radiotherapy unit purchased in 1977. in 1986, the fate of the abandoned site was disputed in the Court of Goiás between IGR and the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, then owner of the premises. On September 11, 1986, during those court hearings, the Court of Goiás was informed of the abandoned radioactive material in the building.

Four months before the theft, on May 4, 1987, Saura Taniguti, then director of the Social Security Institute for Civil Servants in the State of Goiás Instituto de Previdência e Assistência do Estado de Goiás (IPASGO), the pension fund for civil servants Goiás called the police to prevent one of the owners of IGR, Carlos Figueiredo Bezerril, from removing various items that had been left behind. IPASGO owned the land the abandoned facility stood on, and Figueiredo then warned the president of IPASGO, Lício Teixeira Borges, that the radioactive material was at the site, and that IPASGO would now be responsible "for what would happen with the cesium bomb". The Court of Goiás posted a security guard to protect the site. Meanwhile, the owners of IGR had written several letters to Brazil's National Nuclear Energy Commission (Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear; CNEN), warning them about the danger of keeping a teletherapy unit at an abandoned site, and stating IGR could not remove the equipment as a court order prevented them from doing so.

On September 13, 1987, the guard tasked with protecting the site did not show up for work. Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira illegally entered the partially demolished and crumbling IGR site. They partially disassembled the teletherapy unit and placed the source assembly in a wheelbarrow to later take to Roberto's home. They thought they might get some scrap value for the unit.They began dismantling the equipment. That same evening, they both began to vomit due to radiation sickness. The following day, Pereira began to experience diarrhea and dizziness, and his left hand began to swell. He later developed a burn on his hand in the same size and shape as the aperture, and he underwent partial amputation of several fingers.

On September 15, Pereira visited a local clinic, where he was diagnosed with a foodborne illness; he was told to return home and rest. Roberto, however, continued with his efforts to dismantle the equipment and eventually freed the cesium capsule from its protective rotating head. His prolonged exposure to the radioactive material led to his right forearm becoming ulcerated, requiring amputation on October 14.

On September 16, Roberto punctured the cesium capsule's aperture window with a screwdriver, allowing him to see a deep blue light coming from the tiny opening he had created. He inserted the screwdriver and successfully scooped out some of the glowing substance. Thinking it was perhaps a type of gunpowder, he tried to light it, but the powder would not ignite.

The exact mechanism by which the blue light was generated was not known at the time the IAEA report of the incident was written, though it was thought to be either ionized air glow, fluorescence, or Cherenkov radiation associated with the absorption of moisture by the source; a similar blue light was observed in 1988 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States during the disencapsulation of a caesium-137 source.

On September 18, Roberto sold the items to a nearby scrapyard. That night, Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of the scrapyard, noticed the blue glow from the punctured capsule. Thinking the capsule's contents were valuable or supernatural, he immediately brought it into his house. Over the next three days, he invited friends and family to view the strange glowing powder.

On September 21, at the scrapyard, one of Ferreira's friends (identified as "EF1" in the IAEA report) freed several rice-sized grains of the glowing material from the capsule using a screwdriver. Ferreira began to share some of them with various friends and family members. That same day, his wife, 37-year-old Maria Gabriela Ferreira, began to fall ill. On September 25, 1987, Devair Ferreira sold the scrap metal to a third scrapyard.

The day before the sale to the third scrapyard, on September 24, Ivo, Devair's brother, successfully scraped some additional dust out of the source and took it to his house a short distance away. There he spread some of it on the concrete floor. His six-year-old daughter, Leide das Neves Ferreira, later ate an egg while sitting on the floor. She was also fascinated by the blue glow of the powder, applying it to her body and showing it off to her mother. The egg was also exposed to dust from the powder; Leide absorbed 1.0 GBq and received a total dose of 6.0 Gy, a fatal dose for which medical intervention was ineffective. Leide's mother, Lurdes Ferreira, also got sick from the radiation.

Maria Gabriela Ferreira had been the first to notice that many people around her had become severely ill at the same time. On September 28, 1987 – fifteen days after the item was found – she reclaimed the materials from the rival scrapyard and transported them to a hospital.

In the morning of September 29, a visiting medical physicist used a scintillation counter to confirm the presence of radioactivity and persuaded the authorities to take immediate action. The city, state, and national governments were all aware of the incident by the end of the day.

News of the radiation incident was broadcast on local, national, and international media. Within days, nearly 130,000 people in Goiânia flooded local hospitals, concerned that they might have been exposed. Through the use of Geiger counters, 249 were found to be contaminated, some with radioactive residue still on their skin. Eventually, twenty people showed signs of radiation sickness and required treatment.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian\_mass\_killings\_of\_1965%E2%80%9366

The killings started in October 1965 in Jakarta, spread to Central and Eastern Java and, later, to Bali. Smaller outbreaks occurred in parts of other islands, including Sumatra. The communal tensions and bitter hatreds that had built up were played upon by the Army leadership, which characterised communists as villains, and many Indonesian civilians took part in the killings.[64] The worst massacres were in Aceh, Central and East Java, and Bali, where PKI support was at its strongest. The situation varied across the country, and the role of the Army has never been fully explained. In some areas, the Army organised, encouraged, trained, and supplied civilian groups and local militias. In other areas, communal vigilante action preceded the Army, although in most cases, killings did not commence before military units had sanctioned violence by instruction or example. It was in the earlier stages of the killings that the Army's direct involvement in clashes with the PKI occurred. By the end of October, groups of devout Muslims joined the purge of communists, claiming it was their duty to cleanse Indonesia of atheism.

In some areas, civilian militia knew where to find known communists and their sympathisers, while in others, the Army demanded lists of communists from village heads. There was no disguise associated with PKI membership, and most suspects were easy to identify within communities. The U.S. Embassy in Jakarta supplied the Indonesian military with lists of up to 5,000 suspected communists. Although some PKI branches organised resistance and reprisal killings, most went passively to their deaths. Not all victims were PKI members. Often the label "PKI" was used to include anyone to the left of the Indonesian National Party (PNI). In other cases, victims were suspected or simply alleged communists or were victims of grievance settling with little or no political motive. Anti-communist killings were then instigated with youths, assisted by the Army. Most of the victims were not major political figures and were mostly among the poor and the lower middle-class such as farmers, plantation labourers, factory workers, students, teachers, artists, and civil servants. They were often targeted because they or someone they knew, such as a friend or family member, had joined the PKI or an affiliated organisation.

With very few exceptions, the killings were not spontaneous but carried out with a high degree of organisation. Most of the victims were also detainees of the Indonesian Army, making the killings summary executions. Initially, many leftists willingly turned themselves in to the military and the police, believing they would be the safe and, therefore, the reasonable thing to do. The killings were carried out 'face to face' as in Rwanda or Cambodia, unlike the systemized methods of killing used by Nazi Germany. The methods of non-mechanised violence and killing included shooting, dismembering alive, stabbing, disembowelment, castration, impaling, strangling, and beheading with Japanese-style samurai swords. Firearms and automatic weapons were used on a limited scale, with most of the killings being carried out with knives, sickles, machetes, swords, ice picks, bamboo spears, iron rods and other makeshift weapons. Islamic extremists often paraded severed heads on spikes. Corpses were often thrown into rivers, and at one point, officials complained to the Army of congested rivers that run into the city of Surabaya due to the bodies. In areas such as Kediri in East Java, Nahdlatul Ulama youth wing (Ansor Youth Movement) members lined up communists, cut their throats and disposed of the bodies in rivers. Rows of severed penises were often left behind as a reminder to the rest. The killings left whole sections of villages empty, and the houses of victims or the interned were looted and often handed over to the military.

Local Chinese Indonesians were killed in some areas, and their properties looted and burned as a result of anti-Chinese racism, on the excuse that D. N. Aidit had brought the PKI closer to China. Ita Fatia Nadia, an Indonesian historian of Chinese descent, stated in The Jakarta Post that her father was one of the Pemuda Pathuk and a Socialist Party of Indonesia member, who disappeared in October 1965 after Indonesian Army soldiers came by and inspected her house in Yogyakarta when she was seven years old. She remembers when she saw bodies on her way to school and realized that family members and neighbors who went missing were killed; her mother later told her to ignore it. In the predominantly Christian islands of Nusa Tenggara, Christian clergy and teachers suffered at the hands of Muslim youth.

Although there were occasional and isolated flare-ups until 1969, the killings mostly subsided by March 1966, when there were no more suspects or authorities intervened. Solo residents said that exceptionally high flooding in March 1966 of the Solo River, considered mystical by the Javanese, signalled the end of the killings.

In Java, much of the killing was along aliran (cultural stream) loyalties; the Army encouraged santri (more devout and orthodox Muslims) among the Javanese to seek out PKI members among the abangan (less orthodox) Javanese. The conflict that had broken out in 1963 between the Muslim party Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and the PKI turned into killings in the second week of October. The Muslim group Muhammadiyah proclaimed in early November 1965 that the extermination of "Gestapu/PKI" constituted Holy War ("Gestapu" being the military's abbreviation for the 30 September Movement, Gerakan September Tiga Puluh), a position that was supported by other Islamic groups in Java and Sumatra. For many youths, killing communists became a religious duty. Where there had been communist centres in Central and East Java, Muslim groups portraying themselves as victims of communist aggression justified the killings by evoking the Madiun Affair of 1948. Catholic students in the Yogyakarta region left their hostels at night to join in the execution of truckloads of arrested communists.

Although the killings subsided in early 1966 for most of the country, they went on for years in parts of East Java. In Blitar, guerrilla action was maintained by surviving PKI members until they were defeated in 1967 and 1968. The mystic Mbah Suro, along with devotees of his communist-infused traditional mysticism, built a pro-PKI following in Blora Regency, but he and his 80 followers were killed in an operation by the Indonesian Army.

In West Java the battalions of Indonesian forces launched the military operations at Karawang, the operation captured many of the PKI members and sympathisers. by the investigation of the captured PKI members the Indonesian battalions received an information that the Karawang was prepared by the PKI as the centre of PKI activities at West Java by the investigation of Gatot Kotjo (Chairman of Pemuda Rakyat), Mas Mira Subahadi (Candidate of Karawang Regent), and Saidi Sugito (Candidate of Headpolice resorts). Meanwhile, PKI weapons during the 30 September Movement were located at Bekasi Regency.

Mirroring the widening of social divisions across Indonesia in the 1950s and early 1960s, the island of Bali saw conflict between supporters of the traditional Balinese caste system and those rejecting these traditional values, particularly the PKI. Communists were publicly accused of working towards destroying the island's culture, religion, and character, and the Balinese, like the Javanese, were urged to destroy the PKI. Government jobs, funds, business advantage and other spoils of office had gone to the communists during the final years of Sukarno's presidency. Disputes over land and tenants' rights led to land seizures and killings when the PKI promoted "unilateral action". As Indonesia's only Hindu-majority island, Bali did not have the Islamic forces involved in Java, and it was upper-caste PNI landlords who instigated the elimination of PKI members. High Hindu priests called for sacrifices to satisfy spirits angered by past sacrilege and social disruption. Balinese Hindu leader Ida Bagus Oka told Hindus: "There can be no doubt [that] the enemies of our revolution are also the cruellest enemies of religion, and must be eliminated and destroyed down to the roots."[87] Like parts of East Java, Bali experienced a state of near civil war as communists regrouped.

The balance of power was shifted in favour of anti-communists in December 1965, when personnel from both the Army Para-commando Regiment and 5th Brawijaya Military Region units arrived in Bali after having carried out killings in Java. Led by Suharto's principal troubleshooter, Colonel Sarwo Edhie Wibowo, Javanese military commanders permitted Balinese squads to kill until reined in. In contrast to Central Java, where the Army encouraged people to kill the "Gestapu", Bali's eagerness to kill was so tremendous and spontaneous that, having provided logistic support initially, the Army eventually had to step in to prevent chaos. Sukarno's choice of Bali's provincial governor, Suteja, was removed from his post and was later accused of planning a communist uprising of Balinese, and his relatives were tracked down and killed.[90] A series of killings similar to those in Central and East Java were led by black-shirted PNI youth. For several months, militia death squads went through villages capturing suspects and taking them away. Hundreds of houses belonging to communists and their relatives were burnt down within one week of the reprisal crusade, with occupants being butchered as they ran from their homes. An early estimate suggested that 50,000 people, including women and children, were killed in this operation alone. The population of several Balinese villages were halved in the last months of 1965. All the Chinese shops in the towns of Singaraja and Denpasar were destroyed, and many of their owners who were alleged to have financially supported the "Gestapu" killed. Between December 1965 and early 1966, an estimated 80,000 Balinese were killed, roughly 5% of the island's population at the time, and proportionally more than anywhere else in Indonesia.

PKI-organised movements and campaigns against foreign businesses in Sumatra's plantations provoked quick reprisals against communists following the coup attempt. In Aceh, as many as 40,000 were killed, part of the possibly 200,000 deaths across Sumatra. Ethnic Javanese migrants were slaughtered en masse in South Sumatra. The regional revolts of the late 1950s complicated events in Sumatra as many former rebels were forced to affiliate themselves with communist organisations to prove their loyalty to the Indonesian Republic. The quelling of the 1950s revolts and 1965 killings were seen by most Sumatrans as a "Javanese occupation". In Lampung, another factor in the killings seems to have been Javanese immigration. In West Kalimantan, after the killings ended in 1967, indigenous pagan Dayaks expelled 45,000 ethnic Chinese from rural areas, killing as many as 2,000 to 5,000. The Chinese refused to fight back since they considered themselves "a guest on other people's land" with the intention of trading only. In Flores, between 800 and 2,000 people were killed, with an estimated death toll of 3,000 people for the whole province of East Nusa Tenggara. Local Catholics were both the main victims and perpetrators of the killings in Flores.

Islam in Java was divided between Abangan, who mixed Islam with other religions like Hinduism and native religious practices, and the Santri, who followed Sunni Islam. Many Abangans were supporters of the Communist Party, and their interests were thus supported by the PKI. They subsequently made up most of the people who were slaughtered in the killings. Abangans were targeted for attacks by Ansor, the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama and the Santri with help from the Indonesian Army. To avoid being classified as atheist and communists, Abangan Muslims were forced by the Indonesian government to convert to Hinduism and Christianity in the aftermath of the slaughter.

Ansor also targeted gender minorities, including the Bugis third-gender bissu population, deeming their culture to be against Islam. Some bissu had their heads forcibly shaved, and many were reportedly given the option of conforming to exclusively masculine gender roles or be killed. Ansor decapitated Sanro Makgangke, a bissu leader in Bone, and publicly displayed their head as a warning to others. In Sumatra, anti-Javanese Sumatran youths massacred the ethnic Javanese plantation labourers and PKI members throughout North Sumatra. In Lombok, natives slaughtered mostly ethnic Balinese all across the region.

The targeting of ethnic Chinese played an important role in the killings in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which have been called genocide. Charles A. Coppel is sharply critical of this characterisation, in which he sees a western media and academics unwilling to face the consequences of an anti-communist agenda that they endorsed, instead scapegoating Indonesian racism and indulging in extravagant and false claims of hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese killed. Charles Coppel wrote of the distorted coverage in an article titled: "A genocide that never was: explaining the myth of anti-Chinese massacres in Indonesia, 1965–1966". Coppel sees the same bias in coverage of the May 1998 riots, where the Volunteer Team for Humanity noted non-Chinese looters made up the majority of those who were killed. His thesis continues to inspire debate, most notably in Jess Melvin's analysis of historical documents she uncovered from Army Archives in Indonesia about the massacres of 1965/66 in the province of Aceh ("the Indonesian genocide files"): "These documents provide the first documentary evidence that systematic race-based killings did occur in Aceh during the genocide. [...] while I agree ethnic Chinese who were murdered in Aceh during the time of public and systematic killings (7 October – 23 December 1965) were killed primarily because of their alleged relationship with the PKI, this does not mean race was absent as a motivating factor behind the violence."

An estimate is that around 2,000 Chinese Indonesians were killed (out of a total estimated death toll of between 500,000 and 3 million people), with documented massacres taking place in Makassar, Medan and Lombok island. Robert Cribb and Charles A. Coppel noted that "relatively few" Chinese were actually killed during the purge while most of the dead were native Indonesians. The death toll of the Chinese was in the thousands, while the death toll of native Indonesians was in the hundreds of thousands. Ethnic Balinese and Javanese made up the vast majority of people who were massacred.

In 1967 in West Kalimantan, Dayaks were manipulated by the Indonesian military into massacring the Chinese. The land the Chinese fled from was taken by Dayaks as well as by other groups, including the Madurese, who were later also massacred by the Dayaks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS\_Pueblo\_(AGER-2)

Pueblo was taken into port at Wonsan and the crew was moved twice to prisoner-of-war (POW) camps. The crew members reported upon release that they were starved and regularly tortured while in North Korean custody. This treatment turned worse when the North Koreans realized that crewmen were secretly giving them "the finger" in staged propaganda photos.

Commander Lloyd M. Bucher was psychologically tortured, including being put through a mock firing squad in an effort to make him confess. Eventually the North Koreans threatened to execute his men in front of him, and Bucher relented and agreed to "confess to his and the crew's transgression." Bucher wrote the confession since a "confession" by definition needed to be written by the confessor himself. They verified the meaning of what he wrote, but failed to catch the pun when he said "We paean the DPRK [North Korea]. We paean their great leader Kim Il Sung". (Bucher pronounced "paean" as "pee on.")

Negotiations for the release of the crew took place at Panmunjom. At the same time, U.S. officials were concerned with conciliating the South Koreans, who expressed discontent about being left out of the negotiations. Richard A. Ericson, a political counselor for the American embassy in Seoul and operating officer for the Pueblo negotiations, notes in his oral history:

"The South Koreans were absolutely furious and suspicious of what we might do. They anticipated that the North Koreans would try to exploit the situation to the ROK's disadvantage in every way possible, and they were rapidly growing distrustful of us and losing faith in their great ally. Of course, we had this other problem of how to ensure that the ROK would not retaliate for the Blue House Raid and to ease their growing feelings of insecurity. They began to realize that the DMZ was porous and they wanted more equipment and aid. So, we were juggling a number of problems."

He also noted how the meetings at Panmunjom were usually unproductive because of the particular negotiating style of the North Koreans:

"As one example, we would go up with a proposal of some sort on the release of the crew and they would be sitting there with a card catalog ... If the answer to the particular proposal we presented wasn't in the cards, they would say something that was totally unresponsive and then go off and come back to the next meeting with an answer that was directed to the question. But there was rarely an immediate answer. That happened all through the negotiations. Their negotiators obviously were never empowered to act or speak on the basis of personal judgment or general instructions. They always had to defer a reply and presumably they went over it up in Pyongyang and passed it around and then decided on it. Sometimes we would get totally nonsensical responses if they didn't have something in the card file that corresponded to the proposal at hand."

Ericson and George Newman, the Deputy Chief of Mission in Seoul, wrote a telegram for the State Department in February 1968, predicting how the negotiations would play out:

"What we said in effect was this: If you are going to do this thing at Panmunjom, and if your sole objective is to get the crew back, you will be playing into North Korea's hands and the negotiations will follow a clear and inevitable path. You are going to be asked to sign a document that the North Koreans will have drafted. They will brook no changes. It will set forth their point of view and require you to confess to everything they accuse you of ... If you allow them to, they will take as much time as they feel they need to squeeze every damn thing they can get out of this situation in terms of their propaganda goals, and they will try to exploit this situation to drive a wedge between the U.S. and the ROK. Then when they feel they have accomplished all they can, and when we have agreed to sign their document of confession and apology, they will return the crew. They will not return the ship. This is the way it is going to be because this is the way it has always been."

Following an apology, a written admission by the U.S. that Pueblo had been spying, and an assurance that the U.S. would not spy in the future, the North Korean government decided to release the 82 remaining crew members, although the written apology was preceded by an oral statement that it was done only to secure the release.[9][30] On 23 December 1968, the crew was taken by buses to the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) border with South Korea and crossing at the "Bridge of No Return", carrying with them the body of Fireman Duane D. Hodges, who was killed during the capture. Exactly 11 months after being taken prisoner, the captain led the long line of crewmen, followed at the end by the executive officer, Lieutenant Ed Murphy, the last man across the bridge.

Bucher and all of the officers and crew subsequently appeared before a Navy Court of Inquiry. A court-martial was recommended for Bucher and the officer in charge of the research department, Lieutenant Steve Harris, for surrendering without a fight and for failing to destroy classified material, but Secretary of the Navy John Chafee, rejected the recommendation, stating, "They have suffered enough." Commander Bucher was never found guilty of any indiscretions and continued his Navy career until retirement.

In 1970, Bucher published an autobiographical account of the USS Pueblo incident entitled Bucher: My Story. Bucher died in San Diego on 28 January 2004, at the age of 76. James Kell, a former sailor under his command, suggested that the injuries that Bucher suffered during his time in North Korea contributed to his death.

Along with the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Tet Offensive, the Pueblo incident was a key factor in turning U.S. public opinion against the Vietnam War and influencing Lyndon B. Johnson into withdrawing from the 1968 presidential election.

USS Pueblo is still held by North Korea. In October 1999, she was towed from Wonsan on the east coast, around the Korean Peninsula, to the port of Nampo on the west coast. This required moving the vessel through international waters, and was undertaken just before the visit of U.S. presidential envoy James Kelly to Pyongyang. After the stop at the Nampo shipyard, Pueblo was relocated to Pyongyang and moored on the Taedong River near the spot where the General Sherman incident is believed to have taken place. In late 2012, Pueblo was moved again to the Pothonggang Canal in Pyongyang, next to a new addition to the Fatherland Liberation War Museum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnassingb%C3%A9_Eyad%C3%A9ma

Eyadéma had an extensive personality cult, including an entourage of 1,000 dancing women who sang and danced in praise of him; portraits which adorned most stores; a bronze statue in the capital city, Lomé; wristwatches with his portrait, which disappeared and re-appeared every fifteen seconds; and a comic book that depicted him as a superhero with powers of invulnerability and super strength. In addition, the date of a failed attempt on President Eyadéma's life was annually commemorated as "the Feast of Victory Over Forces of Evil."

Eyadéma even changed his first name from Étienne to Gnassingbé to note the date of the 24 January 1974 plane crash of which he was claimed to be the only survivor. In reality, he was not the sole survivor of the crash. There were other survivors, but he deliberately misrepresented the details of the accident to make himself look like a hero with superhuman strength who miraculously survived the disaster when everyone else was killed. Eyadéma claimed that the crash was not an accident and was in fact a conspiracy to kill him, plotted by imperialists who did not like his plan (announced two weeks before the crash) to nationalize the important phosphate mining company, the Compagnie Togolaise des Mines du Bénin (CTMB or Cotomib). His C-47 was replaced by a new presidential jet, Gulfstream II, which was again damaged beyond repair in a fatal accident in the same year. Eyadéma was not on board at the time.

The Iron Guard also looted the Sephardic Temple in Bucharest and set it on fire.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legionnaires%27\_rebellion\_and\_Bucharest\_pogrom

"The Bucharest pogrom was not a side effect of the rebellion, but a parallel event, purposefully organized to give legitimacy to the rebellion and to equate the Legionnaires' opponents with Jewish sympathizers. Many parties took part in the riots against the Jews: police officers loyal to the Legionnaires, various Legionnaire organizations, the workers' union, student union, high-school students, ethnic Romas, and criminals. The attacks on the two Jewish boroughs, Dudești and Văcărești, began a few hours before the rebellion. Minister Vasile Iașinschi [ro] gave the order to set fire to the Jewish neighborhoods, and mobs stormed Jewish homes, synagogues and other institutions. The Legionnaires' headquarters became torture centers, and Jews kidnapped from their homes were brought there. Jews' homes were set on fire and the Jews themselves were concentrated in places where they could be tortured to take their property and Jewish women were raped. Jews were murdered at random, but also in planned executions. Some Jews were thrown from the top floors of the police headquarters building, and others killed in the slaughterhouse. Soldiers did not take part in the pogrom, nor did police officers loyal to Antonescu. Those officers were forced to surrender their weapons and uniforms, and were put under arrest.

Besides extorting the Jews for their hidden property, sadistic youth (including teenagers) took part in the torture, for their own pleasure. It continued for hours and even days and nights, the torturers taking turns. Jews were robbed of any possessions on their person, and sometimes even their clothes. They were made to turn over property hidden elsewhere, private or communal, and were often shot afterwards, as happened to the community treasurer. Some Jews were coerced into writing suicide notes before being killed.

The persecutors were headed by Mircea Petrovicescu, the son of the minister of the interior who was deposed by Antonescu. Legionnaire women took part in the pogrom; all survivors noted their involvement in the torture, and some of the worst acts of abuse were at their hands. According to the witnesses, Legionnaire women stripped Jewish men and hit their genitalia.

On 23 January, a few hours before the rebellion was quelled, a group of Legionnaires selected 15 Jews at random. They took them in trucks to the local slaughterhouse, where they were tortured and/or shot. Five of the Jews, including a five-year-old girl, were hung on meat hooks, still alive. They were tortured, their bellies cut and their entrails hung around their necks in a parody of shehita, kosher slaughter of cattle. The bodies were labeled "kosher". The slaughterhouse had to be closed for a week in order to clean and sanitize it. When Antonescu appointed a military prosecutor to investigate the events at the slaughterhouse, he reported that

he recognized three of his acquaintances among the "professionally tortured" bodies (lawyer Millo Beiler and the Rauch brothers). He noted that "[t]he bodies of the dead were hanged on the hooks used by slaughterers."

The American minister to Romania, Franklin Mott Gunther, toured the meat-packing plant where the Jews were slaughtered and placards reading "Kosher meat" hung from the corpses, and reported back to Washington: "Sixty Jewish corpses were discovered on the hooks used for carcasses. They were all skinned....and the quantity of blood about was evidence that they had been skinned alive". Gunther wrote he was especially shocked that one of the Jewish victims hanging on the meat hooks was a 5-year-old girl, writing that the cruelty displayed was unbelievable. Of the slaughterhouse episode, Romanian author Virgil Gheorghiu later wrote:

"In the big hall of the slaughterhouse, where cattle are hanged up in order to be cut, were now human naked corpses . . . On some of the corpses was the inscription "kosher". There were Jewish corpses. … My soul was stained. I was ashamed of myself. Ashamed being Romanian, like criminals of the Iron Guard."

During the pogrom 125 Bucharest Jews were murdered: 120 bodies were eventually counted, and five never found. Other Jews, not from the Bucharest community, who happened to be in Bucharest at the time, may have also been killed. The Legionnaires ignited the Jewish synagogues and danced around the flames, roaring with joy. To accomplish their mission they used a fuel tanker, sprayed the walls of Kahal Grande (the main Sephardic synagogue) and lit it up. It burnt down completely. In the various synagogues the Legionnaires robbed the worshipers, abused them, took all their valuables and tore up the holy scriptures and ancient documents. They destroyed everything, even the lavatories.

During the riots 1,274 businesses, shops, workshops and homes were badly damaged or destroyed. After the suppression of the rebellion, the army took the Legionnaires' loot in 200 trucks (not including money and jewelry). Some synagogues were partly saved. The large Choral Temple, the city's main Orthodox synagogue was saved from burning completely, because the Legionnaires did not bring enough fuel. In the large synagogue was a Christian, Lucreţia Canjia. She begged the rioters not to burn the synagogue, reminding them of their Christian teachings. The synagogue was saved."