28 3 / 2013
Paris liberation made 'whites only' [BBC News]
Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead.
Yet the BBC’s Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital.
By the time France fell in June 1940, 17,000 of its black, mainly West African colonial troops, known as the Tirailleurs Senegalais, lay dead.
Many of them were simply shot where they stood soon after surrendering to German troops who often regarded them as sub-human savages.
Their chance for revenge came in August 1944 as Allied troops prepared to retake Paris. But despite their overwhelming numbers, they were not to get it.
‘More desirable’
The leader of the Free French forces, Charles de Gaulle, made it clear that he wanted his Frenchmen to lead the liberation of Paris.
Allied High Command agreed, but only on one condition: De Gaulle’s division must not contain any black soldiers.
In January 1944 Eisenhower’s Chief of Staff, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, was to write in a memo stamped, “confidential”: “It is more desirable that the division mentioned above consist of white personnel.
“This would indicate the Second Armoured Division, which with only one fourth native personnel, is the only French division operationally available that could be made one hundred percent white.”
At the time America segregated its own troops along racial lines and did not allow black GIs to fight alongside their white comrades until the late stages of the war.
More at the link.
18 1 / 2013
“Today is A. A. Milne’s birthday. While he is certainly best known as the creator of Winnie the Pooh, Milne was a prolific writer who came to resent his association with the beloved bear of very little brain. One of the more intriguing episodes of Milne’s life is his feud with author P. G. Wodehouse.”
16 1 / 2013
“While big names such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula come to mind when thinking about the vampire legend, it is easy to overlook the tale that solidified these legends and presented to the world of literature the dark, brooding, mysterious, and somewhat Romantic figure that we recognize as the vampire today. This tale is John William Polidori’s The Vampyre.”
Pictured: Title page and first page of a first edition of “The Vampyre” by John William Polidori, via the Ransom Center. Read the accompanying article, “First edition of The Vampyre reveals clues about history of book and its popularity.”
08 12 / 2012
Jeanne Bécu, the comtesse du Barry—better known as Madame du Barry—was executed on December 8th, 1793, after having been found guilty of counter-revolutionary activity. In her last moments, struggling with her executioners, several witnesses recalled that she cried out: “One moment more! I beg you, Monsieur Executioner, one moment more!”
image: (C) RMN-Grand Palais (Château de Versailles) / Gérard Blot
(via allyeneedtoknow)
20 11 / 2012
“You may be familiar with Robert Bridges, who served as England’s Poet Laureate. But chances are, you are unfamiliar with the work of Digby Mackworth Dolben, a school friend of Bridges’s who died at only nineteen. An eccentric and a zealous Anglo-Catholic, long after his death Dolben continued to exercise a compelling hold over his circle, which included Gerard Manley Hopkins.”
24 10 / 2012
Bizarre Victorian fact of the day…
On one day in February 1854 the English novelist and playwright Catherine Crowe ran through the streets of Edinburgh naked apart from a handkerchief and visiting card. It was claimed that Crowe had been informed by spirits that if she did this she would be rendered invisible. She believed that she had remained visible as she had held the handkerchief and visiting card in the wrong hands. She was briefly placed in an asylum but recovered and was later released. Crowe was greatly interested in the supernatural and her most famous work was her book ‘The Night Side of Nature’. First published in 1848 it covered a range of topics including ghost-sightings, poltergeists, doppelgängers, phrenology and mesmerism and had a huge impact on the Victorian public’s fascination with the occult.
(via victorianfanguide)
04 8 / 2012
02 6 / 2012
"The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric."
(Source: mehreenkasana)
12 8 / 2011
Secrets of Tokyo #7: For centuries, a wooden five-storied pagoda stood on the grounds of Yanaka cemetery in Tokyo. On the evening of 6 July 1957, two guilt-ridden lovers, a married man and his decades-younger mistress, committed suicide there by setting themselves and the pagoda on fire. It was completely destroyed.
Now only the foundation stones remain, fenced off from a strangely deserted children’s playground on the fringes of a crowded graveyard. I have stood in many purportedly haunted places in my life but felt nothing. Something about the humid air after a thunderstorm, the deserted jungle-gym, the flicker of a shadow in the carvings on a nearby grave’s stone lantern…the air suddenly was quite cool for the briefest instant and the hair stood up on my arms. Something has stayed behind, I am sure of it.
(Image)
(via gandalf16)
01 2 / 2011
So I’ve decided to learn a new fact everyday in an effort to improve my mind’s social life (it’s getting rather lonely up there since I finished school)
Fact for February 1st, 2011:
The first suicide recorded in the Bible was Abimelech, who lived in the twelfth century B.C. He was the son of Giddeon (Jerubbaal) and a concubine, and he attempted to kill his 70 half-brothers so he could be king. In his final battle, a woman dropped a millstone on his head, and he ordered his sword bearer to kill him so it wouldn’t be said he was killed by a woman.
Source: http://facts.randomhistory.com/
