Living statues

"On a stifling July day in 1918, 18,000 officers and soldiers posed as Lady Liberty on the parade [drill] grounds at Camp Dodge." [This area was west of Baker St. and is currently the area around building S34 and to the west.] "According to a July 3, 1986, story in the Fort Dodge Messenger, many men fainted-they were dressed in woolen uniforms-as the temperature neared 105 degrees Farenheit. The photo, taken from the top of a specially constructed tower by a Chicago photography studio, Mole & Thomas, was intended to help promote the sale of war bonds but was never used."

 

There are many more of such photographs . You can find it here

Stalin offered troops to stop Hitler: Report

Just two weeks before the Second World War broke out, the erstwhile Soviet Union offered France and Britain a military force in a bid to deter German dictator Adolf Hitler's aggression, it has emerged.

Seventy years on, declassified documents have revealed that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was prepared to send nearly a million troops to the German border to stop Hitler if Britain and France agreed to an "anti-Nazi alliance" -- an arrangement that could have changed the course of 20th century history.
In fact, the offer of a military force to help contain Hitler was made by a senior Soviet military delegation at a Kremlin meeting with senior British and French officers, a fortnight before the war broke out in 1939.

According to the new documents, the vast numbers of infantry, artillery and airborne forces which Russian generals said could be dispatched, if Polish objections to the Red Army crossing its territory could first be overcome, The Sunday Telegraph reported.

But the British and French side -- briefed by their governments to talk, but not authorised to commit to binding deals -- did not respond to the Soviet offer, made on August 15, 1939.

Instead, Stalin turned to Germany, signing the notorious non-aggression treaty with Hitler a week later. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the foreign secretaries of the two countries, came on August 23 -- just a week before Nazi Germany attacked Poland, thereby sparking the outbreak of the war.

But it would never have happened if Stalin's offer of a western alliance had been accepted, according to former Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer Major General Lev Sotskov, who sorted the 700 pages of de-classified documents.

"This was the final chance to slay the wolf even after (British Conservative Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain and the French had given up Czechoslovakia to German aggression the previous year in the Munich Agreement.

"This was a chance to save the world or at least stop the wolf in its tracks," Gen Sotskov, now 75, was quoted by the British newspaper as saying.

Courtesy: NDTV

Dead Sea Scrolls to go digital on Internet

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Scientists in Israel are taking digital photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls with the aim of making the 2,000-year-old documents available to the public and researchers on the Internet.

Israel Antiquities Authority, the custodian of the scrolls that shed light on the life of Jews and early Christians at the time of Jesus, said on Wednesday it would take more than two years to complete the project.

For many years after Bedouin shepherds first came upon the scrolls in caves near the Dead Sea in 1947, only a small number of scholars were allowed to view the fragments.

But access has since been widened and they were published in their entirety seven years ago.

Using powerful cameras and lights that emit no damaging heat or ultraviolet beams, scientists in Israel have been able to decipher sections and letters in the scrolls invisible to the naked eye.

The scrolls, most of them on parchment, are the oldest copies of the Hebrew Bible and include secular text dating from the third century BC to the first century AD.

A team of specialists has taken 4,000 pictures of some 9,000 fragments that make up the scrolls, which number 900 in total. A few large pieces of scroll are on permanent display at the Israel Museum.

"We are able to see the scrolls in such detail that no one has before," said Simon Tanner, a digital expert from King's College London, who is in charge of data collection.

Scientists hope the advanced imaging technology will also help them better preserve the scrolls by detecting any deterioration caused by humidity and heat

Related Links

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5,000-year-old cemetery found in Egypt

A 5,000-year-old royal burial ground has been discovered by an Egyptian archaeological mission in southern Egypt, the official MENA news agency has reported.

The ancient cemetery was found in Umm el-Ga'ab area, south of the historical city of Abydos in Sohag governorate, about 400 km south of Cairo, the report said on Saturday.

The burial ground, which contains 13 tombs, is believed to be of senior royal employees or people who contributed to the construction of the cemetery.
The team of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities also found objects of an ancient Egyptian game called ''Senet'', which resembles modern chess.
According to the report, this is for the second time the ''Senet'' game has been discovered. The first one was found in the tomb of boy King Tutankhamen near the southern Egyptian city of Luxor.

 

As reported by NDTV

Rare Gandhi recording found in Washington

A rare recording of a historic speech by Mahatma Gandhi, one of the only two of him speaking in English, made just a few months before his assassination has been found in Washington.

It had been lovingly preserved for 60 years by John Cosgrove, a former president of the National Press Club in the US capital, who discovered the significance of the recording during a chance encounter with Rajmohan Gandhi, Mahatma's grandson and biographer.

Sd reported by NDTV

Nine unknown men - Secret Society in India

We all have heard about the famous/notorious secrets societies of the west like Free Mason, Illuminati. I was wondering whether any such secret society existed or exists in India. With more than 5000 yrs pf history behind it, it is quite possible that such societies would have existed.

There are few articles in the Internet about an ancient secret society in India (probably the oldest in the world as they claim) called Nine unknown men. Here is the wikipedia link. I am not able to brush them off completely as conspiracy theory. If you have more information about the Nine unknown men, please post it as comments.

America's gain was India's loss

Sometime it is surprising to see how two relatively distinct things are linked by a common thread. I am talking about Lord Cornwallis. He was the British commander during the crucial period of American war of independence. His army marched north through North Carolina and into Virginia, where the forces of Washington and the French fleet compelled his surrender at Yorktown in October 1781 [Link].

The defeat at Yorktown did not destroy Cornwallis’s career, however. In 1786, he was appointed governor-general of India, . To prove his competency , he had vowed to control the most powerful Indian king that time, Tiger of Mysore, Tipu sultan. His forces along with the help of Nawab of Hyderabad defeated Tipu In 1792. In fact, his victory over Tipu Sultan had paved the way to the empire building process of lord Wellesley.