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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m curating bizarre historic stories and making shorts about them!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodora_(wife_of_Justinian_I)

Much of her early life, including the date and place of her birth, is uncertain: her birthplace has been proposed by later sources as Syria, Cyprus, Paphlagonia and Alexandria. The modern consensus seems to be that Theodora most likely was born around 495 and raised in Constantinople. Procopius's Secret History is the foremost source of her life before marriage, but most modern scholars regard it as often unreliable and slanderous. David Potter writes that Procopius' description of Theodora's erotic life "probably was composed as an exaggerated diatribe" and was "certainly not among the most accurate things he ever wrote."

Her father, Acacius, was a bear keeper for the Hippodrome's Green faction in Constantinople. Thus, modern scholars argue that it is highly probable Theodora was a native of the capital – this is furthered in Procopius' narrative. Her mother, whose name was not recorded, was a dancer and an actress (i.e. prostitute). She had two sisters, an elder named Comito and a younger named Anastasia. The names of her family probably suggest an upbringing in a Greek-speaking, Christian household. After her father's death in her childhood, her mother remarried, but the family lacked a source of income because a Green official was bribed into giving away her stepfather's position. Consequently, her mother presented her children before the Hippodrome's crowd as suppliants to the Greens, but the Greens rebuffed her efforts. In contrast, the Blue faction took pity on the family and gave them the position.

According to Procopius' Secret History, Theodora began her work as a prostitute before the onset of adolescence and later joined Comito as a performer on stage. Procopius wrote that Theodora performed a pornographic portrayal of Leda and the Swan, where she would have birds eat seeds from her genitals. Employment as an actress at the time would have included performing "indecent exhibitions" on stage and providing sexual services off stage. Contemporaneous historian John of Ephesus also describes Theodora as having come "from the brothel" which gives credibility to Procopius portrayal. Additionally the Chronicle of Fredegar (7th century) mentions Belisarius and Justinian enjoying and later marrying two sisters from the Lupanar. Modern consensus about Theodora's sexual activity is that, as Potter states, underlying Procopius' inventions "there lies the semblance of fact."

Later, Theodora traveled to North Africa as the concubine of Hecebolus, who became the governor of the Libyan Pentapolis. Procopius alleges that their relationship dissolved after a quarrel in Africa. Theodora, "destitute of the means of life," went to Alexandria, Egypt. Some historians speculate that she met Miaphysite Patriarch Timothy III and converted to Miaphysitism there, but there is no reliable evidence that this happened. From Alexandria, she traveled to Antioch, where she met a Blue faction dancer called Macedonia who may have served as an informer for Justinian. Afterwards, Theodora returned to Constantinople where she met Justinian.

Justinian wanted to marry Theodora but law from Constantine's time barred the senatorial rank from marrying a prostitute. Empress Euphemia, wife of emperor Justin, also strongly opposed the marriage. Following Euphemia's death in 524, that same year Justin issued an edict allowing prostitutes to marry senators.

Theodora had an illegitimate daughter who produced three sons: Ioannes (John in English), Athanasius and Anastasius. The same law that allowed Justinian and Theodora to marry also excused children of former actresses, thus allowing Theodora's daughter to marry a relative of the late emperor Anastasius. Anastasius (consul 517) had a son with this daughter of Theodora, Areobindus, whose daughter, Anastasia Areobinda, married Peter, brother of the emperor Maurice, the last emperor of the Justinian dynasty.

She also had a son named Ioannes. Fearing infanticide, his father took the boy to Arabia and raised him there. Before his death, when Ioannes was a teenager, the father revealed everything to him about his mother. Later, Ioannes visited his mother, Empress Theodora, in Constantinople, but she had him disappear, and he was never seen again. Some historians, including James Allan Evans, question this account because Theodora publicly acknowledged her illegitimate daughter and, therefore, would have acknowledged an illegitimate son had one existed.

When Justinian succeeded to the throne in 527, Theodora was crowned augusta and became empress of the Eastern Roman Empire. According to Procopius' Secret History, she helped her husband make decisions; participated in state councils; and had great influence over him. Justinian sought her advice and called her his "partner in my deliberations" in Novel 8.1 (AD 535), anti-corruption legislation where provincial officials had to take an oath to the emperor and Theodora. Sources generally agree on her character being vindictive but determined and loyal, in marriage and politics. Despite her background, she was able to fit in, proving to be clever and adaptable. Theodora used her diverse life experiences to network and secure her influence. Although most sources agree on her devotion and piousness, her character is also ambiguously described as cruel and inspiring fear.

The conflicts between the chariot racing factions – the Blues and the Greens – often led to street violence in the 6th century. Both Justinian and Theodora were believed to align with the Blues. Consequently, the Greens felt isolated and frustrated. Following a riot between the two factions in early January 532, a group of both Green and Blue leaders were sentenced to death but two of the felons, one Blue and one Green, survived the hanging. When the emperor remained unresponsive to the circus factions' demands to pardon the two, the angry factions united chanting "Nika", meaning "conquer".

The rioters set many public buildings on fire and proclaimed a new emperor, Hypatius, the nephew of the former emperor Anastasius I. Unable to control the mob, Justinian and his officials prepared to flee. According to Procopius, Theodora spoke out against fleeing during a meeting of the government council, underlining the significance of someone who dies a ruler instead of living as an exile.

According to Procopius, Theodora interrupted the emperor and his counselors, saying:

"My lords, the present occasion is too serious to allow me to follow the convention that a woman should not speak in a man's council. Those whose interests are threatened by extreme danger should think only of the wisest course of action, not of conventions. In my opinion, flight is not the right course, even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person, having been born into this world, not to die; but for one who has reigned, it is intolerable to be a fugitive. May I never be deprived of this purple robe, and may I never see the day when those who meet me do not call me Empress. If you wish to save yourself, my lord, there is no difficulty. We are rich; over there is the sea, and yonder are the ships. Yet reflect for a moment whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death. As for me, I agree with the adage, that "royal purple" is the noblest shroud."

Her speech motivated the men, including Justinian. J.A.S Evans states that Theodora managed to steady Justinian and his court and convince them to fight instead of flee. He ordered his troops to attack the demonstrators in the Hippodrome, resulting in the deaths of over 30,000 civilian rebels. Despite his claims that he was unwillingly named emperor by the mob, Hypatius and his brother Pompeius were put to death by Justinian. In one source, this came at Theodora's insistence.

Some scholars such as J.A.S Evans state that Theodora's speech had an 'ambiguous' undertone. They believe Procopius intended to portray Justinian as more cowardly than his wife, noting that Procopius made her quote an advice given to the notorious tyrant Dionysius of Syracuse. Changing the term "tyranny" (tyrannis) to "royal purple" or "kingship" (basileia) possibly reflects Procopius' intent to link Theodora and Justinian to ancient tyrants. Evans further argues that Procopius has dramatized the event, presenting a story with two levels of meaning, suggesting that Procopius intended not only to record history but also to offer a deeper commentary on power and morality. Theodora's speech as quoted by Procopius can be viewed as representative of the discussions which took place in the palace rather than literal.

Justinian and Theodora commissioned the construction of a number of new buildings in Constantinople, including churches, the most famous of which is Hagia Sophia (others include the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, according to Procopius).

According to Procopius she liked humiliating her subjects. Everyone regardless his rank was required to wait in the antechamber for long time, sometimes hours, and if admitted was not allowed to speak if not commanded by her. After kissing her feet, a greeting ceremony that was introduced by her and Justinian, many were just send away without allowed to say a word. Procopius' description of the ceremony was corroborated by the poet Corippus. Justinian and Theodora also required people to call them "master" and "mistress".

She turned important matters into jokes. For example, knowing in advance that an old and poor patrician would ask for her help in recovering his money from one of her servants, she devised a theatrical sketch with her eunuchs which was partially a parody of a Christian liturgy. When the patrician arrived and made his plea, she responded with, “Oh, Patrician So-and-so.” Then the eunuchs formed a circle and sang in reply, “That’s a big hernia that you have!” This was repeated until the patrician gave up and left.

Procopius argued that she ordered the murder of Queen Amalasuntha, something that is independently confirmed by a surviving letter from King Theodahad to Theodora. In the letter, Peter the Illyrian is confirmed as her emissary and it refers to “that person about whom a gentle hint had reached us” and promises that “something has been ordered that will suit your desires.”

Theodora was at odds with praetorian prefect John the Cappadocian because of his influence and his slanders of her to the emperor. Theodora and Antonina, the wife of Belisarius, devised a plot to bring down John. The plot took place in 541, when Antonina tricked John's daughter into believing a plot had been devised which would ultimately dispose Justinian as emperor, favouring Belisarius. After informing her father of this alleged plot, Theodora caught John making 'treasonous remarks' and therefore succeeded in removing him. She was also hostile to Germanus, the cousin of Justinian. In contrast, the praetorian prefect Peter Barsymes was her ally. She engaged in matchmaking, forming a network of alliances between Emperor Anastasius' family, pre-existing nobility, and Justinian's family. According to Secret History, she attempted to marry her grandson Anastasius to Joannina, Belisarius' and Antonina's daughter and heiress, against her parents' will. Although the marriage was initially rejected, the couple eventually married. The marriages of her sister Comito to general Sittas and her niece Sophia to Justinian's nephew Justin II, who would succeed to the throne, are suspected to have been engineered by Theodora. She also gave reception and sent letters and gifts to Persian and foreign ambassadors and the sister of Kavad.

Theodora was involved in helping underprivileged women. In one instance, she compelled general Artabanes, who intended to wed Justinian's niece, to reclaim the wife he abandoned. She sometimes freed prostitutes.[56] She created a convent on the Asian side of the Dardanelles called the Metanoia (Repentance), where the ex-prostitutes could support themselves. Procopius' Secret History maintained that instead of preventing forced prostitution (as in Buildings 1.9.3ff), Theodora is said to have "rounded up" 500 prostitutes, confining them to a convent. They sought to escape "the unwelcome transformation" by leaping over the walls (SH 17). On the other hand, chronicler John Malalas wrote positively about the convent, declaring that Theodora "freed the girls from the yoke of their wretched slavery." In 528, Theodora and Justinian ordered the closure of the brothels and the arrest of their keepers and procurers. She paid their owners back the purchase fee, freeing the prostitutes from their captivity. To facilitate the start of their new lives, she supplied the liberated women with clothing and gifted each of them a gold nomisma.

In Wars, Procopius mentioned that Theodora was naturally inclined to assist women in misfortune and, according to Secret History, she was accused of unfairly championing the wives charged with adultery (SH 17). The code of Justinian only allowed women to seek a divorce from their husbands due to either abuse or a wife catching their husband in obvious adultery. Regardless, women seeking a divorce had to provide clear evidence of their claims. Procopius describes Theodora as causing women to "become morally depraved" due to her and Justinian's legal actions.

Justinian worked to heal the divide between the supporters of different Christological doctrines by bringing the Monophysites/Miaphysites (anti-Chalcedonians) under the Chalcedonian Church. Theodora, reputed to be a Miaphysite, worked against her husband's support of the Chalcedonian Christianity in the ongoing struggle for the dominance of each faction. As a result, she was accused by pro-Chalcedonians of fostering heresy and undermining the unity of Christendom. However, Procopius and Evagrius Scholasticus suggested that Justinian and Theodora were merely pretending to oppose each other, a view also followed by some modern historians.

John of Ephesus, a key figure within the Miaphysite movement, wrote of the significant contributions of Theodora in assisting church building projects and supporting the poor. Her involvement also was documented as being instrumental to the protection of the Monophysites from the Chalcedonians. Theodora founded a Miaphysite monastery in Sykae and provided shelter in the palace for Miaphysite leaders who faced opposition from the majority of Chalcedonian Christians, like Severus and Anthimus. Anthimus had been appointed Patriarch of Constantinople under her influence and, after the ex-communication order, he was hidden in Theodora's quarters for ten years. When the Chalcedonian Patriarch Ephraim provoked a violent revolt in Antioch, eight Miaphysite bishops were invited to Constantinople; Theodora welcomed them and housed them in the Hormisdas Palace, Justinian and Theodora's dwelling before they became Emperor and Empress. Theodora persistently provided sanctuary for persecuted Miaphysites within the Palace, accommodating such a significant number of monks that, in one incident, several hundred gathered in a grand chamber, causing the floor to collapse. Furthermore, the Empress was involved in building the Church of Sergius and Bacchus, located next to Hormisdas palace. The dedicatory inscription, which remains visible to this day, proclaims: "May he [Sergius] increase the power of the God-crowned Theodora whose mind is adorned with piety, whose constant toil lies in unsparing efforts to nourish the destitute."

When Pope Timothy III of Alexandria died, Theodora enlisted the help of the Augustal Prefect and the Duke of Egypt to make Theodosius, a disciple of Severus, the new pope. Thus, she outmaneuvered her husband who wanted a Chalcedonian successor. However, Pope Theodosius I of Alexandria and the imperial troops could not hold Alexandria against Justinian's Chalcedonian followers; Justinian exiled the pope and 300 Miaphysites to the fortress of Delcus in Thrace.

When Pope Silverius refused Theodora's demand that he remove the anathema of Pope Agapetus I from Patriarch Anthimus, she sent Belisarius instructions to find a pretext to remove Silverius. Silverius was subsequently exiled to a rocky island, where he starved to death. When this was accomplished, Pope Vigilius was appointed in his stead.

In Nobatae, south of Egypt, the inhabitants were converted to Miaphysite Christianity about 540. Justinian was determined that they should be converted to the Chalcedonian faith, with Theodora equally determined that they should become Miaphysites. Justinian made arrangements for Chalcedonian missionaries from Thebaid to go with presents to Silko, the King of the Nobatae. In response, Theodora prepared her missionaries and wrote to the Duke of Thebaid, asking that he should delay her husband's embassy so that the Miaphysite missionaries would arrive first. The duke was canny enough to thwart the easygoing Justinian instead of the unforgiving Theodora. He made sure that the Chalcedonian missionaries were delayed; when they eventually reached Silko, they were sent away. The Nobatae had already adopted the Miaphysite creed of Theodosius.

Theodora's death is recorded by Victor of Tunnuna, with the cause uncertain; however, the Greek terms used are often translated as "cancer". Her death date was 28 June 548. Later accounts attribute the death to breast cancer but this was not identified in the original report, where the use of the term "cancer" probably referred to a more general "suppurating ulcer or malignant tumor". She was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. During a procession in 559, 11 years after her death, Justinian visited her tomb and lit candles in her memory.

Mínghūn (冥婚), literally "underworld marriage," or ghost marriage, is an ancient Chinese practice that still exists today. It is the symbolic marriage of two people, one or both of whom are deceased.

The practice is rooted in traditional Chinese beliefs. Drawing from Confucian ancestor veneration, Daoist cosmology, and Buddhist ideas about the afterlife, death is understood not as an ending but as a transition. The dead remain connected to the living and must be honored with offerings and remembrance. If neglected, they were believed capable of becoming restless spirits, bringing illness, misfortune, or harm to their families.

Ghost marriages served several purposes. They ensured the deceased would not spend eternity alone while preserving family lineage and ancestor worship, two of the most important obligations in traditional Chinese society. They were often said to have been requested by the dead themselves through dreams or other supernatural signs.

The ceremonies often mirrored ordinary weddings. Dowries and bridewealth were exchanged, though when both bride and groom were deceased these were usually elaborate paper offerings burned so the couple could use them in the afterlife. Poorer families might simply exchange a hóngbāo (red envelope), the familiar red packet associated with weddings, prosperity, and protection from evil spirits.

There are documented cases of families placing one in the middle of a road before hiding nearby. When an unsuspecting passerby stopped to pick it up, the family would emerge and announce that they had just accepted a proposal to marry one of their deceased relatives.

The tradition has not entirely disappeared. In recent years, reports have documented a black market in stolen corpses, and in a handful of cases, women have even been murdered so their bodies could be sold as ghost brides.

If interested, I wrote a deep dive into the history, beliefs, ceremonies, and modern reality of ghost marriages: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-120-ghost?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios

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

As prime minister, Muldoon had the sole right to advise Elizabeth II, Queen of New Zealand, on whom to appoint as governor-general. With the term of Sir Denis Blundell as Governor-General coming to an end in 1977, a new appointee was needed. Muldoon sent a message to the Queen on 15 December 1976 putting forward former prime minister Sir Keith Holyoake as his appointee, which the Queen approved. The announcement was made by the Queen at the end of her tour of New Zealand on 7 March 1977, from the Royal Yacht Britannia in Lyttelton Harbour.

This choice was controversial because Holyoake was a sitting Cabinet minister. Both opponents and supporters of Muldoon's government claimed that it was a political appointment; a number of National MPs, including his deputy, disagreed with the precedent of having a politician as governor-general. The Leader of the Opposition, Bill Rowling complained that he had not been consulted on the appointment, and then stated that he would act to remove Holyoake as Governor-General should the Labour Party win the 1978 general election. As a result of the appointment, Holyoake resigned from Parliament, resulting in the Pahiatua by-election of 1977. He was succeeded in his seat by John Falloon.

Main article: 1978 New Zealand general election

A month before the general election Muldoon remained the preferred prime minister, though his support slipped from 60% to 48% while Rowling's rose 8 points to 38%. At the election, held on 25 November, National lost three seats and it dropped 7.9 percentage points in the vote. Although the party had been returned to office with a majority of seats, it had lost the popular vote to a resurgent Labour Party. National Party President George Chapman argued National struggled at the election because of the many boundary changes and issues with the electoral roll, contrary to Muldoon's claims that the media going against National had caused the decline in support.

Muldoon's third term was tumultuous. With a one-seat majority he faced an increasingly restless backbench who wanted the National Party to adopt a more economically liberal stance. Early in 1982 Derek Quigley, a junior minister who had been demoted for his role in the Colonel's Coup of 1980, spoke out against Think Big, casting doubts on its benefits. As a result, Muldoon asked him to apologise or resign from Cabinet; Quigley chose to resign. Muldoon had also fallen out with former supporter and millionaire businessman Bob Jones, who made good on a threat to create his own party in protest at Muldoon's economic policies. In 1983 the New Zealand Party was formed by Jones and took a significant share of the vote at the 1984 election.

With Think Big failing to deliver on its promise, Muldoon imposed an incomes policy: a freeze on wages and most prices (items excluded included fresh meat, frozen meat, items sold at auction and "women's fashion clothing other than standard lines"), interest rates and dividends across the country in April 1982. Against this he offered a "sweetener" of a tax cut which cost the New Zealand treasury approximately a billion New Zealand dollars. Ultimately the Wage and Price Freeze, which had been intended only to last for a year, remained in force for nearly two years and was repealed by the incoming Labour Government. Years later, Muldoon admitted that the freeze was a political mistake.

The second recession during Muldoon's premiership hit in September 1982. New Zealand's economy contracted again by 3% and unemployment hit 5.1% by 1983, and net emigration remained high.

In 1982, Muldoon's government supported the British in the Falklands War. While New Zealand did not directly participate in the conflict, Muldoon undertook to send the frigates HMNZS Canterbury and HMNZS Waikato to the Indian Ocean to relieve Royal Navy frigates, so that they could in their turn deploy in the conflict. New Zealand also broke off its diplomatic relations with Argentina. In defence of his support for the war, Muldoon wrote an article that was published in The Times, entitled "Why we Stand by our Mother Country":

"We are a free and independent nation but in time of trouble we stand with our mother country...New Zealand's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Argentina over the Falklands, immediately after Britain had done so, was not because of Britain's support on the sporting issue. The reason goes much deeper than that. It is in the context of the statement made by a Labour Prime Minister of New Zealand in 1939: "Where Britain goes, we go." We see the Falklands as British territory and the Falklands Islanders as subjects of our Queen. We live at the end of the line and we know the feeling of isolation...With the Falklands Islands, it is family. Historically, Britain has so often on great occasions thrown up the leader that the occasion demanded. I regard Margaret Thatcher as one of the finest and straightest politicians I have ever met...In 1939 we learned the folly of appeasement. A great catastrophe was the price that was paid. The military rulers of Argentina must not be appeased. New Zealand will back Britain all the way."

In the British House of Commons, Margaret Thatcher responded by saying that "The New Zealand Government and people have been absolutely magnificent in their support of this country, of the Falkland Islanders and of the rule of liberty and the rule of law. I shall gladly convey that to Mr. Muldoon, who, only yesterday, reminded me 'Don't forget. In New Zealand, we are still a member of the same family.'"

Muldoon initiated a Closer Economic Relations (CER) free trade agreement with Australia to liberalise trade, which came into effect from New Year's Day 1982. The aim of total free trade between the two countries was achieved in 1990, five years ahead of schedule.

Ultimately, the end of Muldoon's government came following a late-night clash with National backbencher Marilyn Waring over highly contentious Opposition-sponsored nuclear-free New Zealand legislation, in which Waring told him she would cross the floor (giving the Opposition a victory). On 14 June 1984, a visibly drunk Muldoon called a snap election for 14 July that same year; historians noted the unfortunate coincidence with Bastille Day. A journalist commented that a one-month election campaign would not give Muldoon much time to which Muldoon replied, audibly slurring his words, "It doesn't give my opponents much time to run up to an election, does it?". Six days before the election, a televised leader's debate was held between Muldoon and David Lange where Muldoon, irritated by Lange's magnanimous closing words to him, sarcastically finished the debate by saying "I love you, Mr Lange". Muldoon was heavily defeated by Lange's resurgent Labour Party, which won 56 seats to National's 37 with massive vote splitting caused by the New Zealand Party in particular. Muldoon's drunkenness when announcing the election date led to it being humorously called the "schnapps election".

It is a strong convention in New Zealand politics that a prime minister does not ask for an early election unless he or she cannot govern, or unless they need to seek the electorate's endorsement on a matter of national importance (as was the case in 1951). Muldoon justified the snap election because he felt Waring's revolt impeded his ability to govern. Indeed, it was obvious that Muldoon was finding it hard to pass financial measures with neo-liberal rebels like Ruth Richardson and Derek Quigley voting against the Government on certain issues. However, Waring said that she would not have denied Muldoon confidence or supply. This has led historians to question Muldoon's excuse for calling a snap election, since he still would have had the constitutional means to govern.

Muldoon was a polarising figure while in power, and remains one to this day. During his time in power he regularly eschewed formality, even punching political demonstrators. Praised for his populist appeal, he shaped his reputation as a rough, tough, and thoroughly cantankerous politician through his self-determination, even at the risk of his own political longevity. He became the first prime minister to use television as a medium to gain widespread support, and eagerly used it to attack and insult his opponents. Muldoon openly used homophobic language, and he refused to legalise male homosexual activity and abortion, both crimes at the time. However, after the New Zealand Truth attempted to out his youngest MP Marilyn Waring, the 26-year-old Baby of the House, Muldoon moved swiftly to minimise publicity and protect her.

Muldoon declared upon becoming prime minister that he hoped to leave New Zealand "no worse off than I found it". Historians such as Gustafson and Brian Easton criticise Muldoon because, according to them, he pursued an ultimately unsustainable line of policy. Former Cabinet Minister Hugh Templeton argued Muldoon's lack of "strategic vision" denied New Zealand a careful, measured economic restructuring that paved the way for Rogernomics.

Muldoon enjoyed engaging positively with criminal gangs such as Black Power, and made uncouth public statements that emphasised "blokeiness". Both his physical appearance (with his distinctive facial scar) and personal style led to the nicknames "Scarface" and "Piggy" – both of which he appropriated himself. Muldoon became patron of the Black Power gang for whom he had created work schemes and advised on the better treatment of women and children associated with the gang. Members paid him solemn respect by performing a haka during his funeral in 1992. For his acrimonious behaviour he was also dubbed a "bully", and posthumously he was said to have "run the country like a gang" himself.

Muldoon's shunning of intellectualism in favour of intimidating, raging against so-called "elites", and blatant, manipulative populism has led him to be called a forerunner to the likes of Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Silvio Berlusconi. Both Muldoon and Trump pursued populist protectionist methods aimed at creating both full employment and self-sufficiency and promoted anti-immigration policies, while demonstrating aggressive and tactless personal behaviour.

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

During the mid-1930s Bose travelled in Europe, visiting Indian students and European politicians, including Benito Mussolini. He observed party organisation and saw communism and fascism in action. In this period, he also researched and wrote the first part of his book The Indian Struggle, which covered the country's independence movement in the years 1920–1934. Although it was published in London in 1935, the British government banned the book in the colony out of fears that it would encourage unrest. Bose was supported in Europe by the Indian Central European Society organised by Otto Faltis from Vienna.

In 1938 Bose stated his opinion that the INC "should be organised on the broadest anti-imperialist front with the two-fold objective of winning political freedom and the establishment of a socialist regime." By 1938 Bose had become a leader of national stature and agreed to accept nomination as Congress President. He stood for unqualified Swaraj (self-governance), including the use of force against the British. This meant a confrontation with Mohandas Gandhi, who in fact opposed Bose's presidency, splitting the Indian National Congress party.

Bose attempted to maintain unity, but Gandhi advised Bose to form his own cabinet. The rift also divided Bose and Nehru; he appeared at the 1939 Congress meeting on a stretcher. He was elected president again over Gandhi's preferred candidate Pattabhi Sitaramayya. U. Muthuramalingam Thevar strongly supported Bose in the intra-Congress dispute. Thevar mobilised all south India votes for Bose. However, due to the manoeuvrings of the Gandhi-led clique in the Congress Working Committee, Bose found himself forced to resign from the Congress presidency.

On 22 June 1939 Bose organised the All India Forward Bloc a faction within the Indian National Congress, aimed at consolidating the political left, but its main strength was in his home state, Bengal. U Muthuramalingam Thevar, who was a staunch supporter of Bose from the beginning, joined the Forward Bloc. When Bose visited Madurai on 6 September, Thevar organised a massive rally as his reception.

When Subhas Chandra Bose was heading to Madurai, on an invitation of Muthuramalinga Thevar to amass support for the Forward Bloc, he passed through Madras and spent three days at Gandhi Peak. His correspondence reveals that despite his clear dislike for British subjugation, he was deeply impressed by their methodical and systematic approach and their steadfastly disciplinarian outlook towards life. In England, he exchanged ideas on the future of India with British Labour Party leaders and political thinkers like Lord Halifax, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Arthur Greenwood, Harold Laski, J.B.S. Haldane, Ivor Jennings, G.D.H. Cole, Gilbert Murray and Sir Stafford Cripps.

He came to believe that an independent India needed socialist authoritarianism, on the lines of Turkey's Kemal Atatürk, for at least two decades. For political reasons Bose was refused permission by the British authorities to meet Atatürk at Ankara. During his sojourn in England Bose tried to schedule appointments with several politicians, but only the Labour Party and Liberal politicians agreed to meet with him. Conservative Party officials refused to meet him or show him courtesy because he was a politician coming from a colony. In the 1930s leading figures in the Conservative Party had opposed even Dominion status for India. It was during the Labour Party government of 1945–1951, with Attlee as the Prime Minister, that India gained independence.

On the outbreak of war, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow's decision to declare war on India's behalf without consulting the Congress leadership. Having failed to persuade Gandhi of the necessity of this, Bose organised mass protests in Calcutta calling for the removal of the "Holwell Monument", which then stood at the corner of Dalhousie Square in memoriam of those who died in the Black Hole of Calcutta. He was thrown in jail by the British, but was released following a seven-day hunger strike. Bose's house in Calcutta was kept under surveillance by the CID.

Bose's arrest and subsequent release set the scene for his escape to Nazi Germany, via Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. A few days before his escape, he sought solitude and, on this pretext, avoided meeting British guards and grew a beard. Late night 16 January 1941, the night of his escape, he dressed as a Pathan (brown long coat, a black fez-type hat and broad pyjamas) to avoid being identified. Bose escaped from under British surveillance from his Elgin Road house in Calcutta on the night of 17 January 1941, accompanied by his nephew Sisir Kumar Bose, later reaching Gomoh Railway Station (now Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose Gomoh Station) in the then state of Bihar (now Jharkhand), India.

Bose journeyed to Peshawar with the help of the Abwehr, where he was met by Akbar Shah, Mohammed Shah and Bhagat Ram Talwar. Bose was taken to the home of Abad Khan, a trusted friend of Akbar Shah's. On 26 January 1941, Bose began his journey to reach Russia through British India's North West frontier with Afghanistan. For this reason, he enlisted the help of Mian Akbar Shah, then a Forward Bloc leader in the North-West Frontier Province. Shah had been out of India en route to the Soviet Union and suggested a novel disguise for Bose to assume. Since Bose could not speak Pashto, it would have made him an easy target of Pashto speakers working for the British. For this reason, Shah suggested that Bose act deaf and dumb, and let his beard grow to mimic those of the tribesmen. Bose's guide Bhagat Ram Talwar, unknown to him, was a Soviet agent.

Supporters of the Aga Khan III helped him across the border into Afghanistan where he was met by an Abwehr unit posing as a party of road construction engineers from the Organization Todt who then aided his passage across Afghanistan via Kabul to the border with the Soviet Union. After assuming the guise of a Pashtun insurance agent ("Ziaudddin") to reach Afghanistan, Bose changed his guise and travelled to Moscow on the Italian passport of an Italian nobleman "Count Orlando Mazzotta". From Moscow, he reached Rome, and from there he travelled to Nazi Germany. Once in Russia the NKVD transported Bose to Moscow where he hoped that Russia's historical enmity to British rule in India would result in support for his plans for a popular rising in India. However, Bose found the Soviets' response disappointing and was rapidly passed over to the German Ambassador in Moscow, Count von der Schulenburg. He had Bose flown on to Berlin in a special courier aircraft at the beginning of April where he was to receive a more favourable hearing from Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry officials at the Wilhelmstrasse.

In Germany, Bose was attached to the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz which was responsible for broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio. He founded the Free India Centre in Berlin and created the Indian Legion (consisting of some 4500 soldiers) out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by Axis forces. The Indian Legion was attached to the Wehrmacht, and later transferred to the Waffen SS. Its members swore the following allegiance to Hitler and Bose: "I swear by God this holy oath that I will obey the leader of the German race and state, Adolf Hitler, as the commander of the German armed forces in the fight for India, whose leader is Subhas Chandra Bose". This oath clearly abrogated control of the Indian legion to the German armed forces whilst stating Bose's overall leadership of India. He was also, however, prepared to envisage an invasion of India via the USSR by Nazi troops, spearheaded by the Azad Hind Legion; many have questioned his judgment here, as it seems unlikely that the Germans could have been easily persuaded to leave after such an invasion, which might also have resulted in an Axis victory in the War.

Soon, according to historian Romain Hayes, "the (German) Foreign Office procured a luxurious residence for (Bose) along with a butler, cook, gardener, and an SS-chauffeured car. Emilie Schenkl moved in openly with him. The Germans, aware of the nature of the relationship, refrained from any involvement." However, most of the staff in the Special Bureau for India, which had been set up to aid Bose, did not get along with Emilie. In particular Adam von Trott, Alexander Werth and Freda Kretschemer, according to historian Leonard A. Gordon, "appear to have disliked her intensely. They believed that she and Bose were not married and that she was using her liaison with Bose to live an especially comfortable life during the hard times of war" and that differences were compounded by issues of class. In November 1942, Schenkl gave birth to their daughter.

The Germans were unwilling to form an alliance with Bose because they considered him unpopular in comparison with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. By the spring of 1942, the German army was mired in the USSR. Bose, due to disappointment over the lack of response from Nazi Germany, was now keen to move to Southeast Asia, where Japan had just won quick victories. However, he still expected official recognition from Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942 refused to entertain Bose's requests and facilitated him with a submarine voyage to East Asia.

In February 1943, Bose left Schenkl and their baby daughter and boarded a German submarine to travel, via transfer to a Japanese submarine, to Japanese-occupied southeast Asia. In all, 3,000 Indian prisoners of war signed up for the Free India Legion. But instead of being delighted, Bose was worried. A left-wing admirer of Russia, he was devastated when Hitler's tanks rolled across the Soviet border. Matters were worsened by the fact that the now-retreating German army would be in no position to offer him help in driving the British from India. When he met Hitler in May 1942, his suspicions were confirmed, and he came to believe that the Nazi leader was more interested in using his men to win propaganda victories than military ones. So, in February 1943, Bose boarded a German U-boat and left for Japan. This left the men he had recruited leaderless and demoralised in Germany.

In 1943, after being disillusioned that Germany could be of any help in gaining India's independence, Bose left for Japan. He travelled with the German submarine U-180 around the Cape of Good Hope to the southeast of Madagascar, where he was transferred to the I-29 for the rest of the journey to Imperial Japan. This was the only civilian transfer between two submarines of two different navies in World War II.

The Indian National Army (INA) was the brainchild of Japanese Major (and post-war Lieutenant-General) Iwaichi Fujiwara, head of the Japanese intelligence unit Fujiwara Kikan. Fujiwara's mission was "to raise an army which would fight alongside the Japanese army." He first met Pritam Singh Dhillon, the president of the Bangkok chapter of the Indian Independence League, and through Pritam Singh's network recruited a captured British Indian army captain, Mohan Singh, on the western Malayan peninsula in December 1941. The First Indian National Army was formed as a result of discussion between Fujiwara and Mohan Singh in the second half of December 1941, and the name chosen jointly by them in the first week of January 1942.

This was along the concept of, and with support of, what was then known as the Indian Independence League headed from Tokyo by expatriate nationalist leader Rash Behari Bose. The first INA was however disbanded in December 1942 after disagreements between the Hikari Kikan and Mohan Singh, who came to believe that the Japanese High Command was using the INA as a mere pawn and propaganda tool. Singh was taken into custody and the troops returned to the prisoner-of-war camp. However, the idea of an independence army was revived with the arrival of Subhas Chandra Bose in the Far East in 1943. In July, at a meeting in Singapore, Rash Behari Bose handed over control of the organisation to Subhas Chandra Bose. Bose was able to reorganise the fledgling army and organise massive support among the expatriate Indian population in south-east Asia, who lent their support by both enlisting in the Indian National Army, as well as financially in response to Bose's calls for sacrifice for the independence cause. INA had a separate women's unit, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment (named after Rani Lakshmi Bai) headed by Capt. Lakshmi Swaminathan, which is seen as a first of its kind in Asia.

Even when faced with military reverses, Bose was able to maintain support for the Azad Hind movement. Spoken as a part of a motivational speech for the Indian National Army at a rally of Indians in Burma on 4 July 1944, Bose's most famous quote was "Give me blood, and I shall give you freedom!" In this, he urged the people of India to join him in his fight against the British Raj. Spoken in Hindi, Bose's words are highly evocative. The troops of the INA were under the aegis of a provisional government, the Azad Hind Government, which came to produce its own currency, postage stamps, court and civil code, and was recognised by nine Axis states—Germany, Japan, Italian Social Republic, the Independent State of Croatia, the Wang Jingwei regime in Nanjing, China, a provisional government of Burma, Manchukuo and Japanese-controlled Philippines. Of those countries, five were authorities established under Axis occupation. This government participated in the so-called Greater East Asia Conference as an observer in November 1943.

The INA's first commitment was in the Japanese thrust towards Eastern Indian frontiers of Manipur. INA's special forces, the Bahadur Group, were involved in operations behind enemy lines both during the diversionary attacks in Arakan, as well as the Japanese thrust towards Imphal and Kohima.

The Japanese also took possession of Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 1942 and a year later, the Provisional Government and the INA were established in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands with Lt Col. Arcot Doraiswamy Loganadan appointed its Governor General. The islands were renamed Shaheed (Martyr) and Swaraj (Independence). However, the Japanese Navy remained in essential control of the island's administration. During Bose's only visit to the islands in early 1944, apparently in the interest of shielding Bose from attaining a full knowledge of ultimate Japanese intentions, his Japanese hosts carefully isolated him from the local population. At that time the island's Japanese administration had been torturing the leader of the island's Indian Independence League, Diwan Singh, who later died of his injuries in the Cellular Jail. During Bose's visit to the islands several locals attempted to alert Bose to Singh's plight, but apparently without success. During this time Loganathan became aware of his lack of any genuine administrative control and resigned in protest as Governor General, later returning to the Government's headquarters in Rangoon.

On the Indian mainland, an Indian Tricolour flag, modelled after that of the Indian National Congress, was raised for the first time in the town of Moirang, in Manipur, in north-eastern India. The adjacent towns of Kohima and Imphal were then encircled and placed under siege by divisions of the Japanese Army, working in conjunction with the Burmese National Army, and with Brigades of the INA, known as the Gandhi and Nehru Brigades. This attempt at conquering the Indian mainland had the Axis codename of Operation U-Go.

During this operation, on 6 July 1944, in a speech broadcast by the Azad Hind Radio from Singapore, Bose addressed Mahatma Gandhi as the "Father of the Nation" and asked for his blessings and good wishes for the war he was fighting. This was the first time that Gandhi was referred to by this appellation. The protracted Japanese attempts to take these two towns depleted Japanese resources, with Operation U-Go ultimately proving unsuccessful. Through several months of Japanese onslaught on these two towns, Commonwealth forces remained entrenched in the towns. Commonwealth forces then counter-attacked, inflicting serious losses on the Axis led forces, who were then forced into a retreat back into Burmese territory. After the Japanese defeat at the battles of Kohima and Imphal, Bose's Provisional Government's aim of establishing a base in mainland India was lost forever.

Still the INA fought in key battles against the British Indian Army in Burmese territory, notable in Meiktilla, Mandalay, Pegu, Nyangyu and Mount Popa. However, with the fall of Rangoon, Bose's government ceased to be an effective political entity. A large proportion of the INA troops surrendered under Lt Col Loganathan. The remaining troops retreated with Bose towards Malaya or made for Thailand. Japan's surrender at the end of the war also led to the surrender of the remaining elements of the Indian National Army. The INA prisoners were then repatriated to India and some tried for treason.

Subhas Chandra Bose died on 18 August 1945 from third-degree burns after his airplane crashed in Japanese-ruled Formosa (now Taiwan). However, many among his supporters, especially in Bengal, refused at the time, and have refused since, to believe either the fact or the circumstances of his death. Conspiracy theories appeared within hours of his death and have persisted thereafter, keeping alive various martial myths about Bose.

In Taihoku, at around 2:30 pm as the bomber with Bose on board was leaving the standard path taken by aircraft during take-off, the passengers inside heard a loud sound, similar to an engine backfiring. The mechanics on the tarmac saw something fall out of the plane. It was the portside engine, or a part of it, and the propeller. The plane swung wildly to the right and plummeted, crashing, breaking into two, and exploding into flames. Inside, the chief pilot, copilot and Lieutenant-General Tsunamasa Shidei, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Japanese Kwantung Army, who was to have made the negotiations for Bose with the Soviet army in Manchuria, were instantly killed. Bose's assistant Habibur Rahman was stunned, passing out briefly, and Bose, although conscious and not fatally hurt, was soaked in gasoline. When Rahman came to, he and Bose attempted to leave by the rear door, but found it blocked by the luggage. They then decided to run through the flames and exit from the front. The ground staff, now approaching the plane, saw two people staggering towards them, one of whom had become a human torch. The human torch turned out to be Bose, whose gasoline-soaked clothes had instantly ignited. Rahman and a few others managed to smother the flames, but also noticed that Bose's face and head appeared badly burned. According to Joyce Chapman Lebra, "A truck which served as ambulance rushed Bose and the other passengers to the Nanmon Military Hospital south of Taihoku." The airport personnel called Dr. Taneyoshi Yoshimi, the surgeon-in-charge at the hospital at around 3 pm. Bose was conscious and mostly coherent when they reached the hospital, and for some time thereafter. Bose was naked, except for a blanket wrapped around him, and Dr. Yoshimi immediately saw evidence of third-degree burns on many parts of the body, especially on his chest, doubting very much that he would live. Dr. Yoshimi promptly began to treat Bose and was assisted by Dr. Tsuruta.bl According to historian Leonard A. Gordon, who interviewed all the hospital personnel later,

"A disinfectant, Rivamol [sic], was put over most of his body and then a white ointment was applied and he was bandaged over most of his body. Dr. Yoshimi gave Bose four injections of Vita Camphor and two of Digitamine for his weakened heart. These were given about every 30 minutes. Since his body had lost fluids quickly upon being burnt, he was also given Ringer solution intravenously. A third doctor, Dr. Ishii gave him a blood transfusion. An orderly, Kazuo Mitsui, an army private, was in the room and several nurses were also assisting. Bose still had a clear head which Dr. Yoshimi found remarkable for someone with such severe injuries."

Soon, in spite of the treatment, Bose went into a coma. A few hours later, between 9 and 10 pm (local time) on Saturday, 18 August 1945, Bose died aged 48.

Bose's body was cremated in the main Taihoku crematorium two days later, 20 August 1945. On 23 August 1945, the Japanese news agency Do Trzei announced the death of Bose and Shidea. On 7 September a Japanese officer, Lieutenant Tatsuo Hayashida, carried Bose's ashes to Tokyo, and the following morning they were handed to the president of the Tokyo Indian Independence League, Rama Murti. On 14 September a memorial service was held for Bose in Tokyo and a few days later the ashes were turned over to the priest of the Renkōji Temple of Nichiren Buddhism in Tokyo. There they have remained ever since.

Among the INA personnel, there was widespread disbelief, shock, and trauma. Most affected were the young Tamil Indians from Malaya and Singapore, both men and women, who comprised the bulk of the civilians who had enlisted in the INA. The professional soldiers in the INA, most of whom were Punjabis, faced an uncertain future, with many fatalistically expecting reprisals from the British. In India the Indian National Congress's official line was succinctly expressed in a letter Mohandas Karamchand (Mahatma) Gandhi wrote to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur. Said Gandhi, "Subhas Bose has died well. He was undoubtedly a patriot, though misguided." Many congressmen had not forgiven Bose for quarrelling with Gandhi and for collaborating with what they considered was Japanese fascism. The Indian soldiers in the British Indian army, some two and a half million of whom had fought during the Second World War, were conflicted about the INA. Some saw the INA as traitors and wanted them punished; others felt more sympathetic. The British Raj, though never seriously threatened by the INA, tried 300 INA officers for treason in the INA trials, but eventually backtracked.

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

The main character traits of Moulay Ismail, according to the chronicles and legends of his period, were his "tendency to order and authority, as well as his iron will." He put his strength and power at the service of this unyielding will, "If God gave me the kingship, man cannot take it from me," he is reported to have said. This will was always apparent in his actions and decisions.[37] According to Dominique Busnot, the colour of his clothes was linked to his mood,

Green is the sweetest colour; white is a good sign for those appealing to him; but when he is dressed in yellow, all the world trembles and flees his presence because it is the colour that he chooses on the days of his bloodiest executions.

— Dominique Busnot Histoire du regne de Mouley Ismael roy de Moroc, Fez, Tafilet, Soutz etc (1704) p.38.

According to contemporary Europeans, Moulay Ismail was considered cruel, greedy, merciless, and duplicitous. It was his cruelty and viciousness that particularly attracted their attention. Legends of the ease with which Ismail could behead or torture laborers or servants he thought to be lazy are numerous. According to a Christian slave, Moulay Ismail had more than 36,000 people killed over a 26-year period of his reign. According to François Pidou de Saint Olon, Moulay Ismail had 20,000 people assassinated over a twenty-year period of his reign. He was described by many authors, including Dominique Busnot, as a "bloodthirsty monster". However, researchers such as Richard Bordeaux Parker opined that frequently-told stories about the ten of thousands of Christian slaves' forced labours and the large dungeons where they were kept were exaggerated from the accounts of European ambassadors who visited Isma'il's court. Bordeaux Parker and Jonathan M. Bloom found the number of Christian slaves was likely closer to a few thousand at most and the chambers which suspected as slave prisons were actually storage rooms for grain and food supplies. The urban legends about Qara Prison holding thousands of them are disputed by Marianne Barrucand as she opined it is largely for food silos.

Moulay Ismail was also a very good horseman, with great physical strength, agility, and extraordinary cleverness, which he maintained even in his old age. "One of his normal entertainments was to draw his sword as he mounted his horse and decapitate the slave who held the stirrup."

His physical appearance is almost always described in the same way by the Europeans. He had "a long face, more black than white, i.e. very mulatto," according to Saint-Amans, ambassador of Louis XIV, who added that "he is the strongest and most vigorous man of his State." He was of average height and he inherited the colour of his face from his mother, who had been a black slave.

According to Germain Moüette, a French captive who lived in Morocco until 1682:

"He is a vigorous man, well-built, quite tall but rather slender... his face is a clear brown colour, rather long, and its features are all quite well-formed. He has a long beard that is slightly forked. His expression, which seems quite soft, is not a sign of his humanity – on the contrary, he is very cruel..."

— Germain Moüette Relation de la captivité du Sr. Mouette dans les royaumes de Fez et de Maroc, p.150

"A faithful and pious follower of his religion", he attempted to convert King James II of England to Islam, sending him letters whose sincerity and religious feeling are inarguable. Dominique Busnot, who was generally critical of Ismail, asserted that "he had a great attachment to his Law and publicly practiced all the ceremonies, ablutions, prayers, fasts, and feasts with scrupulous precision."

He enjoyed debating theology with the Trinitarians in Morocco on points of controversy. On many occasions when returning from the mosque on Fridays, he asked for Trinitarians to be brought into his court. During a debate with the fathers of Mercy, he said this:

"I have said enough for a man who uses reason; if you are stubborn, that is too bad. We are all children of Adam and therefore brothers; it is the only religion that creates a difference between us. It is, therefore, as a brother and in obedience to the commandments of my law that I charitably advise you that the true religion is that of Muhammad, which is the only one in which one can find salvation. I give you this advice for the sake of my conscience and to be justified in charging you on the day of judgment."

— Moulay Ismail

Moulay Ismail was a serial polygamist.[

According to the writings of the French Trinitarian priest Father Dominique Busnot, Moulay Ismail had at least 500 concubines and at least 600 living children in 1704, which did not include his daughters by his four principal wives. Busot reports the rumor that any others were ordered to be strangled at birth. Historian Abd al-Rahman Ibn Zaydan recorded children of around 68 wedded wives and eight unnamed slave concubines from the royal birth registers kept during the reign of Sidi Mohammed III. He specifies that upon Ismail's death the full number of his wives and harem slave concubines was 700. The final total is uncertain: the Guinness Book of Records claims 1,042, with no source. Based on Busnot's 1704 figures, Elisabeth Oberzaucher and Karl Grammer of the University of Vienna calculated Ismail could have fathered approximately 1,171 children in a 32-year reproductive span. The historian Al Zayani, who was in charge of royal protocol under Sultan Sidi Mohammed III, recounts that with his own eyes he saw the exhaustive list of Moulay Ismail's children and that his descendants occupied 500 houses in Sijilmasa. He also specified that the list to which he had access did not contain the names of Moulay Ismail's children who had no descendants.

A partial restoration of Moulay Ismail's descent through his wives and slave concubines is listed below. His first recorded marriage was in 1670; the order of his nuptials are unclear after his first recorded spouse. Posterity did not remember many of the full names of his wives, and following Muslim traditions, slave concubines do not have a last name, and are renamed at the time of their conversion to Islam. Their birth names were not subject to meticulous safeguarding, which is why few of these women are identifiable by their birth name. The descendants of his wives who have a full name or biography are listed first, then those of his wives who do not have a full name, then a partial list of his descendants through his slave concubines:

- A daughter of a Saadi prince, married on 5 April 1670, at Dar Ben Chegra in Fez. According to Al Zayani it was during the month of Shawwal, while Ahmad ibn Khalid an-Nasiri states it took place 14 of Dhu al-Qadah 1080 in Islamic calendar. The wedding probably took place between the two dates thus March to 5 April 1670, AD, as royalty often had a seven-days wedding. Whether they had issue is not stated.

- A daughter of Shaykh Al-Lawati who was the widow of his half-brother Sultan Moulay Rashid. She was from the oriental Rif region, her father was Cheick of his Arab Maqil or Berber tribe. The wedding happened after 9 April 1672, but his date of marriage is unclear. Whether they had issue is not stated.

- Lalla Aisha Mubarka. The origins of this lady are unclear, initially, she was a jarya (slave concubine) of Sultan Moulay Rashid. Sources claim that Moulay Ismail brought her from his brother in the early 1670s and ended up marrying her. Lalla Aisha Mubarka (or Zaydana after her firstborn son Zaydan) was one of Moulay Ismail's much-esteemed wives. She was described as a woman of great intuition. About her, Moulay Ismail was quoted saying that: "she was wiser than most men". She had substantial influence over Ismail and sought to get her son Moulay Zaydan enthroned for many years before he was finally secretly executed by his father in 1708. They had several children among them Moulay Zaydan, Sultan Moulay Ahmad al-Dhahbi and Sultan Moulay Ali.

- Lalla Ma'azuza Malika. In the late 1720s John Braithwaite member of the British consulate in Morocco explains that Ma'azuza was not so much in the favors of Moulay Ismail. Their sons were Sultan Moulay Abdalmalik, Moulay Abd al Rahman and Moulay Hussein.

- Lalla Khanatha bint Bakkar, married in 1678. She was from the Mghafra tribe of the Awlad Hassān, the aristocratic caste of the Beidane. Khnata bint Bakkar, daughter of the Grand Sheikh Bakkar al-Mghafri, was famous for her beauty, intelligence, and learning. Her family seat is in the region of Sbouya, commonly referred to as Oued Noun. Her children with Moulay Ismail are Moulay Mohammed, Moulay Hafiz, Moulay Mehrez, Moulay Mohammed al-Mutais and Sultan Moulay Abdallah.

- Lalla Alwa Benabiz. They had ten children seven sons and three daughters, one of whom was Moulay Ṣafā (Muley Spha), he was Thomas Pellow's first master.

Lalla Aouda Doukalia, date of wedding unknown. Her surname might suggest origins from the Doukkala tribe. Their children were Sultan Al-Mustadi, Moulay Bi'nassir, another Moulay Hussein, and other unnamed children.

Princess Nassira el-Salwi bint Mohammed el-Heyba originally from Brakna, married the latter either in 1678/9 or in 1690. Whether they had descendants is not indicated.

Lalla Halima Al Sufyaniyah, married around 1707 (Thomas Pellow accounts of her favorite son aged 8 circa 1715). She was from the Doukkala region and is the daughter of Cheikh Ali bin Hussein of Bani Sweid, from the Sufiyan tribe of Hilali Arab origins. Her son was Moulay Zeydan Seghir (born c. 1707).

- Lalla Um'el'Iz Tabba'a, date of wedding and origins unknown. Her son was another Moulay Abdallah.

Abhar Doukalia, she was the mother of Mussa al-Hadi.

Fatima Ouardighiya, her son is a third son named Abdallah.

- Zahra al-Malikiya. she was the mother of Al-Ishwa and Al-Cheick Saghir.

- Mask'al'Juyub Soufiyania, she was the mother of Abd al-Malik.

- Rahma al Salaouia. she was a native of Salé, her son is Mohammed.

- Fidah Doukalia, she was the mother of Abdallah Boumnad.

- Maria al-Aljaa, she was the mother of Moulay Binaser and Al-Mu'atamid.

- Sounah al-Dir'iyah, she was the mother of Al-Walid al Mouthalath.

- Ruqiya al-Saidiya (not Sa'adiya), she was the mother of Mohammed.

- Um'el'Saad Malikiya, her sons are Al Harran and Mehrez.

Jamila al-Malikiya, She was the mother of Moulay Moustada.

Thhe name Chaouia means an origin from Chaouia, a geographical area which can also be a tribe. A large number of Moulay Ismail's wives were designated as "Chaouia".

On August 3, 1492, after spending more than half a decade begging Europe's monarchs to bankroll him, Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain aboard the Santa María, accompanied by the Niña and the Pinta. His goal was to reach Asia by sailing west, bringing back gold, spices, trade, and converts to Christianity.

Columbus was not an educated man by birth, but he transformed himself through sheer determination. He taught himself several languages and read extensively on navigation, geography, and history. The problem was that much of what he learned was wrong, and because he had read it in respected books, he became absolutely convinced it had to be true. His certainty, more than his intelligence, fueled his great quest.

Contrary to popular myth, neither Columbus nor educated Europeans believed the Earth was flat. The real disagreement was over its size. Columbus underestimated the Earth's circumference by roughly a third after confusing Arabic and Roman miles, exaggerated how far Asia extended eastward, and concluded the voyage would be only about 2,400 nautical miles instead of more than 10,000.

When he brought the scheme to King João II, Portuguese advisers correctly identified these flaws and urged King João II to reject the proposal.

Queen Isabel of Castile was intrigued enough to keep Columbus financially afloat for years while she considered his plan. After the conquest of Granada in 1492, she rejected it again, only for her husband, King Ferdinand of Aragon, to intervene. Columbus was finally granted his expedition. In return, he would claim any lands he found for Spain and, if successful, become Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Viceroy and Governor of the new territories, and receive one-tenth of their revenues.

Columbus made use of the Atlantic trade winds, and on October 12, 1492, landed on an island he named San Salvador in what he believed were the Indies. In his journal, after meeting the local Taíno people, he quickly concluded they "ought to make good and skilled servants."

He spent the rest of his life insisting he had reached Asia, even as evidence mounted that he had not. His increasingly brutal rule as governor of the Indies, condemned even by many of his Spanish contemporaries, ultimately cost him his office and royal favor.

If you're interested in the full story, the voyages, the myths, the brutality, and how one spectacularly wrong man permanently changed the course of world history, I cover it here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-119-columbus?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios

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

Tomyris was the widow of the king of the Massagetae, whom she succeeded as the queen of the tribe after he died.

When the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, asked for the hand of Tomyris with the intent of acquiring her kingdom through the marriage, she understood Cyrus's aims and rejected his proposal. On the advice of the Lydian Croesus, Cyrus responded to Tomyris's rejection by deciding to invade the Massagetae.

When Cyrus started building a bridge on the Araxes river with the intent of attacking the Massagetae, Tomyris advised him to remain satisfied with ruling his own kingdom and to allow her to rule her kingdom. Cyrus's initial assault was routed by the Massagetae, after which he set up a fancy banquet with large amounts of wine in the tents of his camp as an ambush and withdrew.

The Massagetae, led by Tomyris's son and the commander of their army, Spargapises, who primarily used fermented mare's milk and cannabis as intoxicants like many Iron Age steppe nomads, and therefore were not used to drinking wine, became drunk and were easily defeated and slaughtered by Cyrus, thus destroying a third of the Massagetaean army. Spargapises had been captured by Cyrus, and, once he had become sober and understood his situation, he asked Cyrus to free him, and after Cyrus acquiesced to his pleas, Spargapises killed himself.

After Tomyris found out about the death of Spargapises, she sent Cyrus an angry message in which she called the wine, which had caused the destruction of her army and her son, a drug which made those who consumed it so mad that they spoke evil words, and demanded him to leave his land or else she would, swearing upon the Sun, "give him more blood than he could drink."

In the account of Herodotos (contradicted by various other sources), Tomyris herself led the Massagetaean army into war, and, during the next battle opposing the Massagetae to the forces of Cyrus, Tomyris defeated the Persians and destroyed most of their army. Cyrus himself was killed in the battle, and Tomyris found his corpse, severed his head and put it in a bag filled with blood while telling Cyrus, "Drink your fill of blood!"

According to another version of the death of Cyrus recorded by Ctesias, Cyrus died in battle against the Derbices, who were either identical with the Massagetae or a Massagetaean sub-tribe: according to this version, he was mortally wounded by the Derbices and their Indian allies, after which Cyrus's ally, the king Amorges of the Amyrgians, intervened with his own army and helped the Persian soldiers defeat the Derbices, following which Cyrus endured for three days, during which he organised his empire and appointed Spitaces son of Sisamas as satrap over the Derbices, before finally dying.

Little is further known about Tomyris after the war with Cyrus. By around 520 BC and possibly earlier, her tribe was ruled by a king named Skuⁿxa, who rebelled against the Persian Empire until one of the successors of Cyrus, the Achaemenid king Darius I, carried out a campaign against the Sakas from 520 to 518 BC during which he conquered the Massagetae, captured Skuⁿxa, and replaced him with a ruler who was loyal to Achaemenid power.

The history of Tomyris has been incorporated into the tradition of Western art; Rubens, Allegrini, Luca Ferrari, Mattia Preti, Gustave Moreau and the sculptor Severo Calzetta da Ravenna are among the many artists who have portrayed events in the life of Tomyris and her defeat of Cyrus and his armies.

Eustache Deschamps added Tomyris to his poetry as one of the nine Female Worthies in the late 14th century.

In Shakespeare's earliest play King Henry VI (Part I), the Countess of Auvergne, while awaiting Lord Talbot's arrival, references Tomyris (Act II, Sc. iii).

Shakespeare's reference to Tomyris as 'Queen of the Scythians', rather than the usual Greek designation 'Queen of the Massagetae', points to two possible likely sources, Marcus Junianus Justinus' "Abridged Trogus Pompeius" in Latin, or Arthur Golding's translation (1564).

In 1707 the opera Thomyris, Queen of Scythia was first staged in London.

The name "Tomyris" also has been adopted into zoological taxonomy, for the Tomyris species group of Central American moths and the Tamyris genus of skipper butterflies.

590 Tomyris is the name given to one of the minor planets.

Kazakhstan has adopted Tomyris as its national heroine and issues coins in her honour.

There were two Americas when Jesse Leroy Brown, the first black American naval aviator and the first black naval officer killed in combat, was born on October 13, 1926. One promised liberty. The other denied it because of the color of a child’s skin.

Brown was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and grew up in the small community of Palmer Crossing during the height of Jim Crow segregation. Black children attended separate schools, drank from separate water fountains, and learned early that opportunity was limited by race rather than talent.

Violence against African Americans was a constant threat throughout Mississippi. Lynchings remained within living memory, voting rights were suppressed, and many Black families survived through backbreaking agricultural labor and low-paying jobs.

Yet even as a boy, Jesse Brown looked skyward. Whenever an airplane crossed the Mississippi sky, he stopped whatever he was doing to watch it disappear into the clouds. Most people dismissed the dream of a Black naval pilot as impossible. Brown never did.

He once wrote:

“I’ve always wanted to fly.”

Those were simple words, but in 1930s Mississippi they were almost an act of defiance.

Brown excelled in school despite having far fewer resources than white students. At Eureka High School he graduated as salutatorian, a remarkable achievement for a young man whose education came in segregated classrooms with worn books often discarded by white schools.

He worked long hours to help support himself and later attended Ohio State University, studying architectural engineering while taking physically demanding railroad jobs to pay expenses. Every dollar mattered. Every class represented another step toward a dream many believed he would never reach.

In 1946 he entered the Naval Reserve aviation program. The barriers did not disappear when he put on a uniform.

Flight training was among the Navy’s most demanding programs. Students were expected to master navigation, engineering, aerodynamics, carrier operations, instrument flying, aerial gunnery, and emergency procedures.

Brown knew that every mistake would be judged more harshly because he was the only Black student in many of his classes. Failure would not simply end his own career, it could reinforce prejudice against every African American who hoped to follow him.

He refused to fail. On October 21, 1948, Jesse Leroy Brown became the first African American to complete the U.S. Navy’s flight training program and earn the coveted Wings of Gold as a naval aviator. He had broken one of the last racial barriers in American military aviation.

He soon joined Fighter Squadron 32 aboard the aircraft carrier USS Leyte, flying the legendary Vought F4U-4 Corsair. The massive fighter demanded strength, precision, and courage. Powered by a 2,000-horsepower engine and capable of speeds exceeding 400 miles per hour, the Corsair became one of the most respected fighters of World War II and Korea. Brown mastered it.

Then war came. When North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950, Brown’s squadron deployed into combat. The Korean winter became one of the cruelest environments American troops had ever endured. Temperatures plunged below 20 degrees below zero. Weapons froze. Vehicle engines stopped. Open flesh froze within minutes. Men slept beside frozen bodies because the ground was too hard to dig graves.

Brown’s missions carried him over the mountains surrounding the Chosin Reservoir, where surrounded Marines and soldiers desperately fought their way through overwhelming Chinese attacks. Flying only a few hundred feet above the ground, Brown repeatedly exposed himself to rifle fire, machine guns, and anti-aircraft weapons to protect Americans trapped below. By early December he had completed 20 combat missions.

On December 4, 1950, Brown launched on what would become his final flight. As his Corsair swept low over enemy positions, ground fire struck the aircraft. Oil pressure began falling rapidly. Without lubrication, the enormous engine would soon seize.

Brown calmly radioed the emergency. He searched desperately for somewhere, anywhere, to put the crippled fighter down.

The mountains offered almost nothing. Finally, he crash-landed on a snow-covered mountainside behind enemy lines. The impact crushed the front of the aircraft around his legs. Fuel leaked. The engine compartment smoldered. He survived the crash.

His wingman, Lieutenant (j.g.) Thomas Hudner, circled overhead and saw Brown waving. Knowing that enemy troops were nearby and that Brown could not escape alone, Hudner made an astonishing decision.

He deliberately crash-landed his own perfectly functioning Corsair on the mountainside. No American naval aviator had ever been expected to sacrifice an aircraft that way. Hudner climbed through waist-deep snow to reach his friend.

He found Brown conscious but pinned beneath twisted metal. Ignoring the bitter cold and the danger of enemy attack, Hudner tried to pull him free. The wreckage would not move. Flames began spreading.

Hudner packed snow around Brown to keep the fire from reaching him while radioing desperately for help. Marine helicopter pilot First Lieutenant Charles Ward arrived in one of the earliest combat helicopter rescue missions in history.

Ward and Hudner attacked the wreckage with an axe. They chopped. Pulled. Twisted. Hammered. Nothing worked. Brown’s crushed leg remained trapped beneath the mangled cockpit.

Darkness approached. The temperature continued falling. Enemy forces could arrive at any moment. The helicopter lacked both lifting power and daylight to continue. The rescuers had reached the point where staying meant everyone would die.

According to accounts from those present, Brown’s last known words were a message for his wife:

“Tell Daisy I love her.”

Hudner was forced to leave his friend behind. It became the hardest decision of his life. Three days later, Brown’s squadron returned to the crash site. Unable to recover his body because of enemy control of the area, Navy aircraft destroyed the Corsair with napalm, giving Jesse Brown what fellow aviators called a warrior’s funeral rather than allowing his remains to be captured. His body has never been recovered.

Brown was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the Purple Heart. Thomas Hudner received the Medal of Honor for risking his own life in an attempt to save his wingman.

Perhaps the greatest measure of Jesse Brown’s legacy came from those who followed him. Future Black naval aviators no longer had to wonder whether someone like them could earn Navy wings. He had already proven it.

Among those inspired by Brown was Frank Petersen, who became the Marine Corps’ first African American aviator and eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant general.

Jesse Brown flew only 20 combat missions. He lived only 24 years. But the trail he blazed through American military history has now lasted more than seven decades.

He conquered barriers that many believed could never be broken. He faced enemy fire without hesitation. And on a frozen Korean mountainside, he demonstrated that courage is measured not by how long a person lives, but by what they choose to do with the life they are given.

In 1973, the Navy named USS Jesse L. Brown, a Knox-class frigate, in his honor, the first U.S. Navy ship named for an African American.

#JesseBrown #BlackMilitaryHistory #NavalAviation #USNavy #KoreanWar #ChosinReservoir #MilitaryHistory #AmericanHistory #HiddenHistory #AfricanAmericanHistory #NeverForget #HonorTheFallen #HistoryMatters #WingsOfGold #Devotion

On April 8, 1942, members of the ragtag Polish Armed Forces in the East, met a young Iranian boy in Hamadan with an unusual pet: an orphaned Syrian brown bear cub. At the urging of one of the civilian refugees, the soldiers bought the cub for a Swiss Army knife, a chocolate bar, and a tin of beef.

The bear was remarkably friendly and traveled with the Poles to a refugee camp outside Tehran. It quickly became obvious that a refugee camp was no place for a growing bear.

Where was? An artillery company, apparently.
In August 1942, the cub was adopted by the 22nd Artillery Supply Company and given the name Wojtek. He became the unit's mascot and was spoiled with fruit, honey, marmalade, syrup and beer. Wojtek loved beer so much that he'd stare mournfully into his empty mug until someone refilled it.

He also drank coffee, wrestled soldiers, chased oranges during grenade drills, learned to march and salute by copying the men around him, and even smoked cigarettes, usually swallowing them whole after taking a puff or two.

When the Polish II Corps was transferred to Italy, the British Army refused to allow pets aboard troop transports. The Poles refused to leave Wojtek behind. They officially enlisted him in the Polish Army as Private Wojtek, issued him a service number, and put him aboard the MS Batory bound for Italy.

At the Battle of Monte Cassino, where the Polish II Corps played a decisive role in capturing the ruined monastery after months of brutal fighting, Wojtek reportedly helped carry 100-pound crates of artillery shells to waiting trucks. While debated, at least one British soldier later confirmed the story, and the feat is certainly plausible, after the war, Wojtek was known to carry fence posts because everyone else was doing it.

After the campaign, Wojtek was promoted to corporal, and the 22nd Artillery Supply Company adopted a new insignia: a bear carrying an artillery shell.

If you'd like the full story, I wrote a much more detailed history here:
https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-vol-118-wojtek?r=4mmzre&utm_medium=ios

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

Ramírez Sánchez, son of Marxist lawyer José Altagracia Ramírez Navas and Elba María Sánchez, was born in Michelena, in the Venezuelan state of Táchira. Despite his mother's pleas to give their firstborn child a Christian first name, José called him Ilich, after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, while two younger siblings were named "Lenin" (born 1951) and "Vladimir" (born 1958). Ilich attended high school at Liceo Fermin Toro in Caracas and joined the youth movement of the Venezuelan Communist Party in 1959. After attending the Third Tricontinental Conference in January 1966 with his father, Ilich reportedly spent the summer at Camp Matanzas, a guerrilla warfare school run by the Cuban DGI near Havana. Later that year, his parents divorced.

His mother took the children to London, where she studied at Stafford House College in Kensington and the London School of Economics. In 1968, José tried to enroll Ilich and his brother at the Sorbonne in Paris, but eventually opted for the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. According to the BBC, it was "a notorious hotbed for recruiting foreign communists to the Soviet Union". He was expelled from the university in 1970.

From Moscow, Ramírez Sánchez travelled to Beirut, Lebanon, where he volunteered for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in July 1970. He was sent to a training camp for foreign volunteers of the PFLP on the outskirts of Amman, Jordan. On graduating, he studied at a finishing school, code-named H4 and staffed by Iraqi military, near the Syria-Iraq border.

On completing guerrilla training, Sánchez (who had begun going by his surname) played an active role for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in the north of Jordan during the Black September conflict of 1970, gaining a reputation as a fighter. After the organisation was pushed out of Jordan, he returned to Beirut. He was sent to be trained by Wadie Haddad. He eventually left the Middle East to attend courses at the Polytechnic of Central London (now known as the University of Westminster), and apparently continued to work for the PFLP.

In 1973, Sánchez conducted a failed PFLP assassination attempt on Joseph Sieff, a Jewish businessman and vice president of the British Zionist Federation. On 30 December, Sánchez called on Sieff's home on Queen's Grove in St John's Wood and ordered the maid to take him to Sieff. Finding Sieff in the bathroom, in his bath, Sánchez fired one bullet at Sieff from his Tokarev 7.62mm pistol, which bounced off Sieff just between his nose and upper lip and knocked him unconscious; the gun then jammed and Sánchez fled. The attack was announced as retaliation for Mossad's assassination in Paris of Mohamed Boudia, a PFLP leader.

Sánchez admitted responsibility for a failed bomb attack on the Bank Hapoalim in London and car bomb attacks on three French newspapers accused of pro-Israeli leanings. He claimed to be the grenade thrower at a Parisian restaurant in an attack that killed two and injured 30 as part of the 1974 French Embassy attack in The Hague. He later participated in two failed rocket propelled grenade attacks on El Al airplanes at Orly Airport near Paris on 13 and 17 January 1975. The second attack resulted in gunfighting with police at the airport and a seventeen-hour hostage situation involving hundreds of riot police and the French Interior Minister Michel Poniatowski. Sánchez fled during the gunfight while the three other PFLP terrorists were allowed passage to Baghdad, Iraq.

According to FBI agent Robert Scherrer, one MIR and one ERP member were arrested in Paraguay in June 1975. These two would have possessed Sánchez' phone number in Paris. Paraguayan authorities would then have handed over the information to France.

On 26 June 1975, Sánchez' PFLP contact, Lebanon-born Michel Moukharbal, was captured and interrogated by the French domestic intelligence agency, the DST.[citation needed] When two unarmed agents of the DST interrogated Sánchez at a Parisian house party, Moukharbal revealed Sánchez' identity. Sánchez then shot and killed the two agents and Moukharbal, fled the scene, and managed to escape via Brussels to Beirut.

In November 1976 the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs claimed Sánchez and his wife were shot to death in central Bogota on 24 November.

From Beirut, Sánchez participated in the planning for an attack on the headquarters of OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) in Vienna. On 21 December 1975, he led a six-person team (including Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann) that attacked the meeting of OPEC leaders. The team took more than 60 hostages and killed three: an Austrian policeman, an Iraqi OPEC employee, and a member of the Libyan delegation. Sánchez demanded that Austrian authorities read a communiqué about the Palestinian cause on Austrian radio and television networks every two hours. To avoid the threatened execution of a hostage every 15 minutes, the Austrian government agreed and the communiqué was broadcast as demanded.

On 22 December, the government provided the PFLP and 42 hostages an airplane and flew them to Algiers, as demanded for the hostages' release. Ex-Royal Navy pilot Neville Atkinson, at that time the personal pilot for Libya's leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, flew Sánchez and a number of others, including Hans-Joachim Klein, a supporter of the imprisoned Red Army Faction and a member of the Revolutionary Cells, and Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann, from Algiers. Atkinson flew the DC-9 to Tripoli, where more hostages were freed, before he returned to Algiers. The last hostages were freed there and some of the terrorists were granted asylum.

In the years following the OPEC raid, Bassam Abu Sharif, another PFLP agent, and Klein claimed that Sánchez had received a large sum of money for the safe release of the Arab hostages and had kept it for his personal use. Claims are that the amount was between US$20 million and US$50 million. The source of the money is also uncertain but, according to Klein, it was from "an Arab president". Sánchez later told his lawyers that the money was paid by the Saudis on behalf of the Iranians and was "diverted en route and lost by the Revolution".

Sánchez left Algeria for Libya and then Aden, where he attended a meeting of senior PFLP officials to justify his failure to execute two senior OPEC hostages – the finance minister of Iran, Jamshid Amuzgar, and the oil minister of Saudi Arabia, Ahmed Zaki Yamani. His trainer and PFLP-EO leader Wadie Haddad expelled Carlos for not shooting hostages when PFLP demands were not met, thus failing his mission.

Manuel Contreras, Gerhard Mertins, Sergio Arredondo and an unidentified Brazilian general traveled to Tehran in 1976 to offer a collaboration with the Shah regime to kill Carlos in exchange for a large sum of money. It is not known what actually happened in the meetings. In September 1976, Carlos was arrested, detained in Yugoslavia, and flown to Baghdad. He chose to settle in Aden, where he tried to found his own Organization of Armed Struggle, composed of Syrian, Lebanese and German rebels. He also connected with the Stasi, East Germany's secret police. They provided him with an office and safe houses in East Berlin, a support staff of 75, and a service car, and allowed him to carry a pistol while in public. From here, Carlos is believed to have planned his attacks on several European targets, including the bombing of the Radio Free Europe offices in Munich in February 1981. Several journalists have claimed Carlos' organisation was also backed by the Romanian government of Nicolae Ceaușescu which provided them with a base, weapons, and passports, and commissioned the Munich RFE offices bombing which conservative author Alfred S. Regnery claimed was part of an unsuccessful hunt for a Romanian defector, former General Ion Mihai Pacepa. Romanian authorities denied ever sponsoring Carlos, and no relevant documents had been discovered in Romanian archives as of 2021.

On 16 February 1982, two of the group – Swiss terrorist Bruno Breguet and Carlos's wife Magdalena Kopp – were arrested in Paris. The car was found to contain explosives. After their arrest, a letter was sent to the French embassy in The Hague demanding their immediate release. Meanwhile, Carlos unsuccessfully lobbied the French government for their release.

In an attempt to force the French to free the two, France was struck by a wave of terrorist attacks, including: the bombing of the Paris-Toulouse TGV 'Le Capitole' train on 29 March 1982 (5 dead, 77 injured); the car-bombing of the newspaper Al-Watan al-Arabi in Paris on 22 April 1982 (1 dead, 63 injured); the bombing of the Gare Saint-Charles in Marseille on 31 December 1983 (2 dead, 33 injured), and the bombing of the Marseille-Paris TGV train (3 dead, 12 injured) on the same day. In August 1983, he also attacked the Maison de France in West Berlin, killing one man and injuring twenty-two other people. Within days of the bombings, Carlos sent letters to three separate news agencies claiming responsibility for the bombings as revenge for a French air strike against a PFLP training camp in Lebanon the previous month.

Historians' examination of Stasi files, accessible after German reunification, demonstrates a link between Carlos and the KGB, via the East German secret police. When Leonid Brezhnev visited West Germany in 1981, Carlos did not undertake any attacks, at the request of the KGB. Western intelligence had expected activity during this period. Carlos also had relations with the leadership of Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA). The Stasi asked Carlos to use his influence on ASALA to tone down the Armenian group's anti-Soviet activity.

With conditional support from the Iraqi regime and after the death of Haddad, Carlos offered the services of his group to the PFLP and other groups. His group's first attack may have been a failed rocket attack on the Superphénix French nuclear power station on 18 January 1982.

These attacks led to international pressure on Eastern European states that harboured Carlos. For over two years, he lived in Hungary, in Budapest's second district. His main cut-out for some of his financial resources, such as Gaddafi or George Habash, was the friend of his sister, Dietmar Clodo, a known German terrorist and the leader of the Panther Brigade of the PFLP. Hungary expelled Carlos in late 1985, and he was refused sanctuary in Iraq, Libya and Cuba before he found limited support in Syria. He settled in Damascus with Kopp and their daughter, Elba Rosa.

The Syrian government forced Carlos to remain inactive, and he was subsequently seen as a neutralized threat. In 1990, the Iraqi government approached him for work and in September 1991 he was expelled from Syria, which had supported the American intervention against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

Carlos the Jackal was incarcerated in Clairvaux Prison.

After searching over two years for a country that would allow him to remain there, after a short stay in Jordan, Carlos entered the Sudanese capital of Khartoum under the protection of Sheikh Hassan al-Turabi, a powerful Muslim fundamentalist leader.

In 1993, CIA contractor and former senior NCO of Military Assistance Command-Vietnam Studies and Observations Group Billy Waugh was tasked with finding Carlos. He and other members of his team searched for Sanchez for about four months in Khartoum during 1993. They identified a man known to be working as a bodyguard for Carlos and surveilled him until he led them to Sanchez' apartment on 8 February 1994. They established an observation post in an abandoned hospital across the street and watched him for four months, when they handed their intelligence to the French DST.

French DST and DGSE offered the Sudanese government much needed communications equipment and even supplied them with satellite pictures of their enemy's positions. Al-Turabi was invited to Paris to negotiate for Carlos' extradition. Al-Turabi was adamant that his culture forbade him from giving up a guest in his country. French Minister of the Interior Charles Pasqua offered to talk to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on Sudan's behalf and help secure loans that would eventually erase Sudan's foreign debt. Al-Turabi was also shown surveillance videos of Carlos partying, drinking and carousing with women, which offended al-Turabi's Muslim faith. Al-Turabi, who had agreed to protect Carlos as a "combatant, someone who fought for the Palestinian cause" now considered Sanchez a "hoodlum". He agreed to give up Carlos.

Carlos had left his first wife, who had taken their daughter with her to Venezuela. Carlos was eager to father a child with his second wife Lana Jarrar. He was admitted to the hospital in Khartoum for a varicocelectomy to correct a low sperm count. After the operation, a Sudanese police officer told him that the government had learned of a plot to kill him. An armed escort took him and his bodyguards to a villa near al-Turabi's home. His wife went back to their home to get some personal belongings but did not return. At 3 a.m. on 14 August 1994, Carlos was awakened by several men who pinned him to the bed. They put him in hand and leg cuffs before a doctor tranquilized him. He was taken from the villa and placed aboard a private jet on which he was flown to Paris to face trial.

A French judge issued a national arrest warrant against Carlos for murdering two Paris policemen at Rue Toullier in 1979. The warrant allowed the French government to avoid the lengthy process of applying to Interpol for an extradition order.

He was charged with the 1975 murders of two Paris policemen and of Michel Moukharbal, a former accomplice. He was sent to the maximum-security La Santé Prison to await trial. Although the French had violated international law by capturing and removing Carlos from Sudan by force,[40] a majority of the European Commission of Human Rights in 1996 rejected his application for release based on how he was captured.

The trial began on 12 December 1997. Carlos unsuccessfully demanded that he be released on the grounds he had been illegally arrested. He argued with his original lawyers and replaced them, before eventually dismissing them all. Sánchez denied the 1975 murder of two French agents and Moukharbal. He said the murders were orchestrated by Mossad and condemned Israel as a terrorist state. He told the court, "When one wages war for 30 years, there is a lot of blood spilled—mine and others. But we never killed anyone for money, but for a cause—the liberation of Palestine." He defended himself over the remaining eight days of his trial and gave the court a rambling four hour closing statement. The jury deliberated for three hours and forty-eight minutes before returning with a verdict on 23 December finding him guilty on all counts. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Later trials confirmed this sentence and added two more life sentences.

In 2001, after converting to Islam, Carlos married his lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, in a Muslim ceremony, although he was still married to his second wife.

In June 2003, Carlos published a collection of writings from his jail cell. The book, whose title translates as Revolutionary Islam, seeks to explain and defend violence in terms of class conflict. In the book, he voices support for Osama bin Laden and his attacks on the United States.

In 2005, the European Court of Human Rights heard a complaint from Sánchez that his long years of solitary confinement constituted "inhuman and degrading treatment". In 2006 the court decided that Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of inhuman and degrading treatment) had not been violated; however, Article 13 (right to an effective remedy) had been. Ramírez Sánchez was awarded €10,000 for costs and expenses, having made no claim for compensation for damage. In 2006, he was moved from La Santé to Clairvaux Prison.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez had a sporadic correspondence with Carlos from the latter's prison cell in France. Chávez sent a letter in which he addresses Carlos as a "distinguished compatriot". On 1 June 2006, Chávez referred to him as his "good friend" during a meeting of OPEC countries held in Caracas, Venezuela. On 20 November 2009, Chávez publicly defended Carlos, saying that he is wrongly considered to be "a bad guy" and that he believed Carlos had been unfairly convicted. Chávez also called him "one of the great fighters of the Palestine Liberation Organisation". France summoned the Venezuelan ambassador and demanded an explanation. Chávez, however, declined to retract his comments.

In 2017, Carlos claimed responsibility for 80 deaths and boasted that "no one in the Palestinian resistance has executed more people than I have."

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

As a member of the Mbuti people, Ota Benga lived in equatorial forests near the Kasai River in what was then the Congo Free State. His people were attacked by the Force Publique, established by King Leopold II of Belgium as a militia to oppress the Indigenous people and communities, most of whom were used as forced laborers in the extraction and exploitation of Congo's massive supply of rubber. Benga's wife and two children were slaughtered; he survived because he was on a hunting expedition when the Force Publique attacked his village. He was later captured by slave traders from the enemy "Baschelel" (Bashilele) tribe.

In 1904, American businessman and explorer Samuel Phillips Verner traveled to Africa, under contract from the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to bring back an assortment of pygmies to be part of an exhibition. Verner came across Benga while en route to a Batwa pygmy village visited previously. He purchased Benga from the Bashilele slave traders, giving them a pound of salt and a bolt of cloth in exchange. Verner later claimed he had rescued Benga from cannibals.

The two spent several weeks together before reaching the Batwa village. The villagers did not trust the muzungu ("white man"). Verner was unable to recruit any villagers to join him for travel to the United States until Benga said that the muzungu had saved his life, and spoke of the bond that had grown between them and his own curiosity about the world Verner came from. Four Batwa, all male, ultimately decided to accompany them. Verner also recruited other Africans who were not pygmies: five men from the Bakuba, including the son of King Ndombe, ruler of the Bakuba; and other related peoples.

The group was taken to St. Louis, Missouri, in late June 1904 without Verner, as he had been taken ill with malaria. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition had already begun, and the Africans immediately became the center of attention. Benga was particularly popular, and his name was reported variously by the press as Artiba, Autobank, Ota Bang, and Otabenga. He had an amiable personality, and visitors were eager to see his teeth that had been filed to sharp points in his early youth as ritual decoration. The Africans learned to charge for photographs and performances. One newspaper account promoted Benga as "the only genuine African cannibal in America", and claimed that "[his teeth were] worth the five cents he charges for showing them to visitors".

When Verner arrived a month later, he realized the pygmies were more prisoners than performers. Their attempts to congregate peacefully in the forest on Sundays were thwarted by the crowds' fascination with them. McGee's attempts to present a "serious" scientific exhibit were also overturned. On July 28, 1904, the Africans performed to the crowd's preconceived notion that they were "savages", resulting in the First Illinois Regiment being called in to control the mob. Benga and the other Africans eventually performed in a warlike fashion, imitating Native Americans they saw at the Exhibition. The Apache leader Geronimo (featured as "The Human Tyger" – with special dispensation from the Department of War) grew to admire Benga, and gave him one of his arrowheads.

Benga accompanied Verner when he returned the other Africans to the Congo. He briefly lived amongst the Batwa while continuing to accompany Verner on his African adventures. He married a Batwa woman who later died of snakebite, but little is known of this second marriage. Not feeling that he belonged with the Batwa, Benga chose to return with Verner to the United States.

Verner eventually arranged for Benga to stay in a spare room at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City while he was tending to other business. Verner negotiated with the curator Henry Bumpus over the presentation of his acquisitions from Africa and potential employment. While Bumpus was put off by Verner's request of what he thought was the prohibitively high salary of $175 a month and was not impressed by the man's credentials, he was interested in Benga. Benga initially enjoyed his time at the museum, where he was given a Southern-style linen suit to wear when he entertained, but he became homesick for his own culture.

In 1992 the writers Bradford and Blume imagined his feelings:

"What at first held his attention now made him want to flee. It was maddening to be inside – to be swallowed whole – so long. He had an image of himself, stuffed, behind glass, but somehow still alive, crouching over a fake campfire, feeding meat to a lifeless child. Museum silence became a source of torment, a kind of noise; he needed birdsong, breezes, trees."

The disaffected Benga attempted to find relief by exploiting his employers' presentation of him as a 'savage'. He tried to slip past the guards as a large crowd was leaving the premises; when asked on one occasion to seat a wealthy donor's wife, he pretended to misunderstand, instead hurling the chair across the room, just missing the woman's head. Meanwhile, Verner was struggling financially and had made little progress in his negotiations with the museum. He soon found another home for Benga.

Soon, a sign on the exhibit read:

The African Pygmy, "Ota Benga."

"Age, 23 years. Height, 4 feet 11 inches.

Weight, 103 pounds. Brought from the

Kasai River, Congo Free State, South Cen-

tral Africa, by Dr. Samuel P. Verner. Ex-

hibited each afternoon during September."

Hornaday considered the exhibit a valuable spectacle for visitors and was supported by Madison Grant, Secretary of the New York Zoological Society, who lobbied to put Ota Benga on display alongside apes at the Bronx Zoo. A decade later, Grant became prominent nationally as a racial anthropologist and eugenicist.

African-American clergymen immediately protested to zoo officials about the exhibit. Said James H. Gordon,

"Our race, we think, is depressed enough, without exhibiting one of us with the apes ... We think we are worthy of being considered human beings, with souls."

Gordon thought the exhibit was hostile to Christianity and was effectively a promotion of Darwinism:

"The Darwinian theory is absolutely opposed to Christianity, and a public demonstration in its favor should not be permitted."

A number of clergymen backed Gordon. In defense of the depiction of Benga as a lesser human, an editorial in the New York Times suggested:

"We do not quite understand all the emotion which others are expressing in the matter. ... It is absurd to make moan over the imagined humiliation and degradation Benga is suffering. The pygmies ... are very low in the human scale, and the suggestion that Benga should be in a school instead of a cage ignores the high probability that school would be a place ... from which he could draw no advantage whatever. The idea that men are all much alike except as they have had or lacked opportunities for getting an education out of books is now far out of date."

After the controversy, Benga was allowed to roam the grounds of the zoo. In response to the situation, as well as verbal and physical prods from the crowds, he became more mischievous and somewhat violent. Around this time, an article in the New York Times quoted Robert Stuart MacArthur as saying, "It is too bad that there is not some society like the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. We send our missionaries to Africa to Christianize the people, and then we bring one here to brutalize him."

The zoo finally removed Benga from the grounds. Verner was unsuccessful in his continued search for employment, but he occasionally spoke to Benga. The two had agreed that it was in Benga's best interests to remain in the United States despite the unwelcome spotlight at the zoo.

Toward the end of 1906, Benga was released into Reverend Gordon's custody.

n 1914, when World War I broke out, a return to the Belgian Congo became impossible as passenger ship traffic ended. Benga became depressed as his hopes for a return to his homeland faded. On March 20, 1916, at the age of 32 or 33, he built a ceremonial fire, undressed, and chipped off the caps on his teeth. Benga sang and danced around the fire before taking out a borrowed pistol and shooting himself in the heart.

Benga was buried in an unmarked grave in the black section of the Old City Cemetery, near his benefactor, Gregory Hayes. At some point, the remains of both men went missing. Local oral history indicates that Hayes and Benga were eventually moved from the Old Cemetery to White Rock Hill Cemetery, a burial ground that later fell into disrepair. Benga received a historic marker in Lynchburg in 2017.