It all started in a pretty much calm and neutral manner: “Officials of the United Nations are seeking revision of their year-old arrangement to take over 912 apartments in two housing developments now built by the Metropolitan and the New York Life Insurance companies… And Byron Price, Assistant Secretary General, in charge of housing for [...]

More than 50 years ago, a Soviet Party leader, Nikita Khruchev, publicly critiqued Stalin. Many of those who attended the conference remembered “death-like” silence that covered the conference hall. It was February 25, 1956. That day, delegates of the XX Party Session were unexpectedly called up for a closed meeting. When Khruchev went on a [...]

On September 20, 1946, the doors leading to the President’s oval-shaped office still were closed when 10:30 arrived. Five minutes more passed …10…15…Finally, the doors opened, and the reporters surged in. Mr. Truman was at his desk, attired in a blue suit, red tie and a red handkerchief peeping from his breast pocket. He showed [...]

On November 5, 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and captured American hostages. This moment is well-known, documented and discussed by many, but what is less known or rather forgotten is that 16 days after it, on November 20, 1979, Islamic students stormed the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. What started as [...]

On August 6, 1945, during World War II, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, a Japanese city and headquarters of the 2nd General Army. Sixteen hours later after the attack, U.S. President Harry S. Truman’s report of the event was broadcast to radio listeners: “The world will know that the first [...]

The Deir Yassin massacre (Deir Yassin is also transliterated from Arabic as Dayr Yasin and frequently (mis)transliterated from Hebrew writings as Dir Yassin) refers to the killing of scores of Arab civilians at the village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine by Jewish irregular forces between April 9 and 11, [...]

World War One or the Great War began with the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand who was heir to the throne of the mighty empire of Austria-Hungary. In the summer of 1914, he and his wife, Sophie, made a visit to the troubled province of Bosnia, where on June 28, Serbian nationalist Gavrilo Princip fatally [...]