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The story of Eva Duarte, who rose from an illegitimate child of a poor provincial woman in Argentina to one of the most powerful woman of her time, was nothing short of a fairytale. She met Col. Juan Peron when she was just 24, and as his lover, she not only built his political charisma but also started a populist movement to reinstate him when he was ousted in 1945.
On February 7th, 1910, one Herbert Cholmondesly of HMFO demanded a special train from London’s Paddington Station to convey four Abyssinian princes to Weymouth docks. In fact, the troupe who boarded HMS Dreadnought that morning were pranksters, recruited by the noted adventurer William Horace de Vere Cole, the ‘Cholmondesly of the FO’. Under the elaborate disguises as African potentates were novelist Virginia Woolf, sportsman Anthony Buxton, artist Duncan Grant and a judge’s son Guy Ridley. Their interpreter was Woolf’s brother Adrian. Red carpet and a guard of honour awaited them at Weymouth, with Admiral Sir William May himself welcoming the company.
On the evening of February 15th 1942, the commander of the British forces in Singapore, Lieut. General Arthur Ernest Percival, surrendered the city to General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Imperial Japanese Army. This was the greatest military disaster in the British history since the Charge of Light Bridge some eighty years before.
During 1992 Presidential Election campaign, challenger Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas attacked the incumbent president George H. W. Bush as not doing enough to assist the working middle-class and being “out of touch” with the common man. A gaffe–overhyped by media–played right into Clinton’s hands on February 5th, when the president visited a national grocer’s convention in Orlando, Florida.
1968. It was a year of turmoil and trepidation. Assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Vietnam War had come home with impending drafts. Thus it wasn’t a surprise that the college campuses all over the United States erupted into chaos and disorder–and nowhere was did disorder more apparent than on the grounds of Columbia University in New York.
Stalin’s son, Jakov Djugashvili Stalin was an engineer by profession, During the Second World War, he served as a senior lieutenant and battery commander of the 14th Howitzer Regiment, attached to the 14th Tank Division and was captured on 16 July 1941 near Vitebsk by the Nazis.
In what would be one of the most bizarre curtain calls ever made by a politician, President Abdurrahman Wahid of Indonesia appeared briefly on the steps of his palace on the night of July 23rd 2001, wearing striped shorts, a polo T-shirt and sandals. With the help of a bodyguard and his daughter Yenni, who served as a personal aide to the half-blind and senile president, Wahid awkwardly waved at ever-dwindling supporters gathered on the other side of razor wire barricades.
The Pearl Harbour Attacks
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Today marks the 68th Anniversary of the Pearl Harbor Attacks. In mid 1941, the United States reacted to Japanese occupation of French Indochina by freezing Japanese assets. In October, the moderate cabinet in Tokyo was replaced by a hardliner government headed by General Tojo. At 7:58 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, the alarm went out: “Air raid, Pearl Harbor. This is not drill!” as many naval personal were at their Sunday masses
Winston Churchill by Yousef Karsh
