Books, Posts, Podcasts, & Mini-Docs – PAUL ANDREWS
How much do you know about the famous Michelangelo’s David? You have likely seen countless pictures of the famous naked statue on the internet, TV or in books. You recognize the handsome, muscular, nude male, standing with his feet apart, sling at the ready, staring off into the distance at the giant, Goliath. But Michelangelo’s David holds many secrets. Listen to the Podcast to learn them all.
For all their revolutions and wars over the last four decades, you must remember that Iraq and Iran are relatively new nations on the world scene. Neither existed as we know them today prior to World Wars I and II. Since then, these 2 very different Muslim nations, with similar sounding names, have had a long history of dynasties, revolutions and republics. Let’s take a look at them one at a time.
Prior to World War I, the Iraqi area was the eastern part of the Ottoman Empire, ruled by the Turks for Five Centuries after they conquered the region from the Persian Empire. Baghdad was key due to its rich cultural history and central location on the Tigris River. But it was ruled with an iron fist by the Ottoman Sultans, who kept all the warring tribes under control.
In World War I, the Ottoman Empire sided with the losing side of Germany and Austro-Hungary. The end of that war marked the end of the Ottoman Empire as well. Britain and France won control over ALL the Middle East. The Turks were left with the footprint of modern Turkey.
A British/French plan called the ‘Sykes-Picot Agreement’ essentially carved up the Middle East between them. In 1920, the Iraqi region became a ‘British Mandate’ under the League of Nations, formally called the “State of Mesopotamia,” with the modern straight-line borders we know today. Britain brought in a Sunni king from Arabia to rule over the new constitutional monarchy, which included both Shiite Muslim and northern Kurdish tribes.
In 1932, “IRAQ” gained independence as a constitutional monarchy, with a British-appointed King Faisal I. From the 1930s to the 1950s, Iraqi politics were dominated by pro-Western prime ministers who began drilling for more oil and modernizing the country. The Hashemite family ruled until 1958, when King Faisal II was assassinated (along with the entire royal family!) in a bloody coup led by General Abdul Qasim. This marked the beginning of a military-dominated republic.
Qasim ruled for 5 years, before being overthrown himself and murdered by Colonel Abdul Arif in 1963. Five years later, he too was deposed by a Ba’ath Party coup in 1968. The Ba’ath Party was remarkably dominated by Sunni Muslims in a predominately Shiite nation. Iraq’s abundant oil revenues were used to develop the economy, build schools and hospitals, but also substantially grow its military. The Ba’ath leaders were then pushed out of power by a familiar name, General Saddam Hussein.
Hussein seized power as president in 1979. The following year, he launched an invasion of Iran that led to the bloody Iran-Iraq War. Iraq was heavily backed with aid by the US, Europe and Saudi Arabia – Iran by the Soviet Union and China. It ended with a stalemate after 8 long years. In 1990, Hussein invaded its neighbor Kuwait. This set off a US-lead counter invasion by the 1st President George Bush beginning the First Iraqi War. This was of courser followed by the 2nd President George Bush and the Second Iraqi War in 2003. This finally led to the fall of the Ba’ath regime, and Hussein’s ultimate capture and hanging in 2006. It has since been a parliamentary republic once again, but still subject to extremist influence.
Sunnis and Shiites are both Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad wrote the Quran and founded Islam and the first Islamic state in Arabia in 622. The dispute and difference comes over who was Muhammad’s rightful successor. The Sunnis believes that the first four Caliphs–Muhammad’s successors—are the rightful leaders of Islam. Shiites believe that only the heirs of the fourth Caliph Ali, Muhammad’s son-in-law, are the legitimate successors. The split in Islamic leadership and religion has remained ever since. Shiites are concentrated in Iraq and Iran, while Sunnis dominate 85% of all Muslims (1.5 billion worldwide) in North Africa, Turkey, the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Southeast Asia.
Prior to WWI, the Iranian region was the center of the Persian Empire, ruled by the Qajar Dynasty. Discontent boiled over into revolution. In 1906, the last Qajar shah, Muzaffar al-Din was forced to introduce a parliament, the Majlis, and a constitution, in what is known as the Constitutional Revolution. However, the next shah, Mohammad Ali, did not care for the Majlis and attacked parliament with his artillery in 1908, introducing Martial Law. This led to another uprising in 1909 and Shah Ali was forced to abdicate in favor of his son.
Britain, the US and Soviet Union in the meantime ALL became increasingly interested in Iran following the World War II, due to its vast oil reserves. In 1921, a British-backed Iranian officer Reza Khan seized control of the government in a yet another coup. He ousted the last Qajar ruler and named himself Shah. This began what would be Iran’s final royal dynasty – the Pahlavis.
Reza Shah tried to both modernize and westernize Iran, but after 15 years, was forced out as well by Britian and Soviet Russia and into exile because of his ties to Adolf Hitler’s Nazis. His son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, took the throne in 1941. In 1943, at the Tehran Conference, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin signed the Tehran Declaration, accepting an independent “IRAN,” under the young Shah Reza.
British Petroleum (BP) in the meantime was making millions in Iran and Iraq. The next ruler, Mohammed Mosaddeq, fought to nationalize the oil industry and repatriate the wealth. Needless to say, that did not go over well with the west. In 1953, the US CIA and Britain orchestrated a coup to oust Prime Minister Mosaddeq, bringing the pro-western Shah Pahlavi back to power in the so called White (bloodless) Revolution.
In following years, Iran forged closer and closer ties with Washington, receiving huge amounts of military and economic aid until the late 1970s. Iran began ramping up its military and became one of the region’s strongest military powers. The country also saw more westernization, including greater freedom for women. This came much to the dismay of the strict Muslim clerics, who denounced western influences on Islam.
Khomeini claimed the shah had reduced the Iranian people to “American dogs.” The Shah responded by banishing Khomeini from Iran. The Shah ruled until 1979, when he too was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution by a coalition of military generals and Muslim clerics opposed to his despotic rule. The Shiite Clergy took control, under the leadership of none other than Ayatollah Khomeini, who returned from exile, forcing the Shah out of the country.
Khomeini declared Iran a theocracy with himself as the Supreme Leader, and a ‘President’ with lesser powers. Iran entered the aforementioned Iran-Iraq War, when Saddam Hussein invaded western Iran, ending in a stalemate 8 years later. Khomeini ruled the country until his death in 1989. He was succeeded by the current Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who continued his predecessor’s policies.
So you see, Iraq and Iran are relatively new, but very critical, entries into the global scene. The bubbling hot pots of Iraq and Iran, plus their neighbors, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been stirred and supplemented for decades by European, Russian, American, tribal and Muslim mixing spoons. Each has attempted democracy, only to fall back into military or religious dictatorships. One regime is a trusted ally and supported by the US and Europe, the next one is a dangerous enemy and taken to war. What lies in the future? You have only to look at the past.
A few precious acts of courage and decency took place during the World War II Jewish Holocaust by brave and compassionate people. Irena Sendler was one of its greatest forgotten heroes. Unknown by most, this courageous Polish woman defied the Nazis and managed to smuggle 2,500 Jewish children out of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto.
When German tanks rolled into Poland in 1939, Irena was only 29. A petite Social Worker for the Warsaw Welfare Department, Irena stood just 4′11″, with lively, intelligent eyes set in a pretty, always-smiling face. Her appearance more resembled a porcelain doll than a fearless Resistance Leader. She used those innocent-looking attributes to her advantage.
She was born in Otwock, a small town just outside of Warsaw. At the end of World War I, a typhus epidemic erupted, and Irena’s father the local doctor, devoted himself to caring for the Jews in their town. “If you see someone drowning, jump in to save them,’ he told her, ‘their religion or nationality are irrelevant.’ He eventually contracted the disease himself and died when she was just 7 years old, but not before leaving a lasting impression on young Irena.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, Irena was a Senior Administrator in the Warsaw Social Welfare Dept. It operated canteens providing meals, money, and clothes for orphans, the elderly, and poor of the city. Through Irena, the canteens also provided the same for secret Jewish families. They were registered under fictitious Christian names, and to discourage Nazi inspections, were reported as being afflicted with the dreaded tuberculosis. She did this alone, as her husband was a POW soldier captured by the Germans.
The Jews were provided daily rations of only 200 calories and no medicine. The deplorable conditions in the crowded Warsaw Ghetto resulted in typhoid epidemics and high death rates. At least 280,000 of those who survived disease and starvation were shipped away to the infamous Treblinka Concentration Camp. It was there Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution of the Holocaust took place with the gassing and incineration of the Jews.
By 1942, after over 280,000 Jews were deported to Treblinka, Zegota (the Council for Aid to Jews), a Polish underground group, was secretly formed. Sendler was so appalled by the conditions in the Ghetto that she immediately stepped forward and joined them. She appealed to her 10 closest colleagues to come as well, mostly women, some as young as she was.
In order to enter the Ghetto, Irena Sendler obtained a pass from the Epidemic Control Department to inspect the Jews, as the Nazis feared disease outbreaks beyond the slum walls. She visited the Ghetto daily, established key contacts inside and brought food, medicines and clothing in.
In 1943, Zegota appointed Sendler their Head of Jewish Children. Irena exploited her contacts with Polish orphanages, in order to make them accept Jewish children as ‘Christians’ to fool the Nazis. Many were sent to the Family of Mary Orphanage in Warsaw, and to other Catholic institutions run by nuns, who then found non-Jewish families to foster them.
Wearing a yellow Star of David in the Ghetto to show her solidarity and gain trust, Irena then began talking to desperate Jewish parents into giving up their children to her. The parents had a heartbreaking choice to make and Irena could afford them no assurances of the children’s safety, only that their life might be better outside the Ghetto.
For Sendler, a young mother of two herself, persuading parents to part with their children was a horrendous task. “Can you guarantee they will live?” the distraught parents asked. “I can only guarantee they will die if they stay!” The children’s cries when they were separated from their parents and given to Irena was heartbreaking. Finding families willing to risk their lives and shelter the children, was also not easy.
Irena Sendler began smuggling children out of the Ghetto anyway she could: in an ambulance hidden under the litters – some in body bags – some buried under loads of goods, or in garbage wagons. One mechanic took a sedated infant out hidden in his toolbox. Some were carried out in potato sacks – others in coffins. She smuggled older children out through the city’s sewers to ‘The Aryan Side‘ of Warsaw. Irena even trained a small terrier who, when the hidden children would start to whimper, would bark and distract the Nazis.
The city was crawling with traitors, and the Gestapo were constantly on the lookout for escaped Jews. “You are not Rachel, but Roma,” she drilled the older children. “You are not Isaac, but Jacek. Repeat it a hundred times, over and over!” Irena knew that any child could be stopped and interrogated. If they were unable to recite a simple Catholic prayer, they could be shot on sight. She would wake them up during the night to practice the prayers.
Irena Sendler had Catholic identity papers forged and signed by priests so the children could be taken to orphanages and convents. She sent most of the children to Catholic organizations, knowing she could count on the Sisters hatred of the Nazis. No one ever refused to take a child. She made sure that each family hiding a child knew they must be returned to Jewish relatives after the war ended.
She kept the precious records on a fragile scroll in a glass jar buried beneath an apple tree in a park across the street from German barracks. She hoped to later locate the children after the war and inform them of their Jewish past. In all, the precious glass jar would contain the names of 2,500 children.
But it was Irena herself who entered the Ghetto day after day for eighteen months—and walked out each time with hidden children. Her life was in constant danger and ultimately, the Nazis began to suspect her numerous crossings. In 1943, the Gestapo raided her apartment one night. Informants had turned her in. She was arrested and immediately imprisoned.
Irena was the only one at Zegota who knew the names of the families sheltering the Jewish children. She was interrogated daily and tortured mercilessly by the Gestapo. During one brutal session, her captors broke both her feet and legs. But no one could break her spirit! She refused to betray either her associates or any of the Jewish children. Irena eventually received a sentence of Death by Nazi firing squad.
By then, the brave Irena welcomed death, which would spare her the constant fear of divulging her co-conspirators under torture. At the last minute, Zegota bribed a greedy German guard who helped Irena escape prison into the surrounding woods just as she was being led by him to her execution!
Her sacrifice and its consequences prevented her from attending her own mother’s funeral. Nevertheless, with the help of the Polish Resistance and some 200 convents and orphanages, Irena and her helpers managed to save the lives of at least 2,500 Jewish children. Right under the noses of the Nazis.
After Russia liberated Poland in 1945, she dug up that glass jar she had so carefully buried and used the notes to track down the children she placed with either orphanages or foster families, hoping to reunite them with Jewish relatives. But sadly, most lost their families in the Treblinka Death Camp during the Holocaust, so they were formally adopted by their Christian foster parents.
The Polish Communists branded Irena a ‘subversive’ and she was largely unknown and unappreciated … except amongst the survivors. She lived out the next 50 years in anonymity, haunted by nightmares of the horrors she witnessed in the Ghetto. Irena Sendler – white-haired, gentle and courageous, lived a modest existence with her children in a Warsaw apartment. She worked as an administrator in the Polish United Workers Party and later joined the Solidarity Movement in 1980.
But decades later, after she was honored for her wartime heroism, her picture began appearing in newspapers and the phone began to ring. “I remember your face!” they said. “You were the angel who took me from the Ghetto.” The children, now adults, kept in touch over her remaining years, many visiting her regularly.
Irena’s amazing achievement went largely unnoticed outside Warsaw. Until her story was uncovered in 1999 by 4 students at a rural Kansas high school, who began researching her for a national history competition. The 4 girls were intrigued by a single sentence their teacher showed them in an article: “Irena Sendler saved 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942–1943.” They were convinced it was a typo. They soon realized there had been no mistake.
After winning the competition, the media began to pick up on the story of this “Female Oskar Schindler” who eclipsed his famous list of 1,200 Jews saved. Popularized by National Public Radio, C-SPAN and CBS, it finally brought Irena Sendler’s story of bravery to the world.
The students never expected to be able to ask Irena herself any questions. They assumed she must have passed away years ago. They were in fact thrilled to discover that she was still alive! The girls wrote to Irena, who still lived in a tiny Warsaw apartment with family. They told her about their play, which had won the history contest!
When they learned she was already 91, their town raised money for the 4 students and their teacher, Norman Conrad, to fly to Poland to meet Irena in person. They wanted to learn more details about her amazing life, and especially the biggest question of all: Where did she find the courage to defy the Nazis?
Media covered their visit, breaking nearly 60 years of silence. Sendler has since been honored by numerous Jewish organizations and received The Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor in 2003. She has officially been designated a Polish National Hero and schools are now named in her honor. In 2007, she was even nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Yet it was not for her own sake that Irena was so pleased with the recognition. Rather, it was that the full work of Zegota was finally being recognized. Irena Sendler did not think of herself as a hero. “I could have done more,” she once said. “This regret will haunt me to my death.”
Her courage enabled not only the survival of 2,500 Jewish children but also generations of their descendants. Irena Sendler lived a long life and passed away in 2008 at the age of 98. She was buried in Warsaw’s Powazki Cemetery—a place reserved for the elite among Poland’s scholars, writers, politicians and war heroes. Though surrounded by notable headstones, the grave graced with the most flowers and candles of remembrance is always Irena’s.
The deadliest avalanche in history occurred at the worst possible time in the worst possible place. A powerful avalanche killed hundreds of Austrian and Italian soldiers near Italy’s Mount Marmolada on 13 December 1916, in the middle of World War I. It would come to be known as White Friday. Over the next several weeks, more avalanches in the Alps killed an estimated 10,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers fighting Nature, as well as each other. Some claim the avalanches were purposefully triggered against the enemy, but we’ll never know for sure.
World War I began in 1914, with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo by a teenage Serbian boy. European nations stood by their allegiances and declared war on each other. Austria, Hungary and Germany against Russia, France and Britain. Italy, on the other hand, did not join the war right away. According to the 1882 Triple Alliance, Italy, Germany, and Austro-Hungary were allies. However, the terms allowed Italy to remain neutral, at least at the beginning of the war.
As the fighting continued into 1915, the Allies began to woo the Italians into joining their side. The lure for Italy was the promise of the Austrian Alps, specifically the Italian-speaking Tyrol region, in southwest Austria. After 2 months of negotiations, Italy finally stepped in, declaring war on Germany and Austro-Hungary in 1915.
In the spring of 1916, the Austrian army swept south, through the mountains in a major offensive. Had they reached the Italian plain, they could have marched on to Venice and encircled much of the Italian Army, breaking a year long stalemate. But the Italians were ready, marched north to meet them, and stopped them in the Alps.
In any battle, the side with the high ground has the advantage. So each side tried to climb higher and higher into the Alps, dragging their supplies and heavy artillery with them. Armies climbed as high as they could … and then dug in. Tunnels were blasted into the glaciers and mountainsides, while barracks were built to protect soldiers from the freezing cold.
An estimated 600,000 Italians and 400,000 Austrians would die on the Alpine Front during the war, many in fierce battles along the Isonzo River. But the front zigzagged 400 MILES—nearly as long as the France/Belgium front with Germany, mostly in rugged mountains, where the fighting was as hellish as the trenches.
But never had the mountains themselves been the battlefield, or the fighting at a modern scale, with fearsome new weapons high up there on the ‘Roof of the World.’ So bloody battles raged amidst the cold, snowy, mountains of Tyrol. The conditions were often worse than the actual battles. This was certainly true in December 1916, when freakishly heavy snowfall in the Alps created conditions ripe for avalanches. While the freezing cold and enemy fire were obvious dangers, even more deadly were the heavily snow-packed peaks lying just above their heads.
The hundreds of Austro-Hungarian troops stationed in a barracks near the Gran Poz summit of Mount Marmolada were in particular danger. The camp was well-placed to protect it from Italian attack, but was unfortunately situated directly under a steep mountainside of unstable snow. The Kaiserschützen Barracks were built at about 11,000 feet in August 1916 to house the 1st Battalion, Imperial Rifle Regiment. The location on a rock cliff was well situated to protect it from Italian mortar fire. They were now in one of the most beautiful places on earth AND one of the most deadly.
One gauge recorded 56 inches (143 cm) just that winter. This created conditions ripe for avalanches. At the start of December, the snow was 8–12 meters (40 feet) deep at the summit. The Austro-Hungarian commander, Captain Rudolf Schmid, could see this through his binoculars and was well aware of the danger his company faced. He wrote to his superior, Field Marshal Ludwig Goiginger of the 60th Infantry, requesting immediate relocation father down the mountain. His appeal to evacuate was denied. During the next 8 days, even more snowfall fell, downing telephone lines and leaving each border outpost stranded without supplies or communication.
On Wednesday morning, December 13, 1916, at 05:30 am, a massive rumbling woke the sleeping soldiers in their darkened barracks. A few might have recognized the sound and had a second to shout, “Lawine!” But that’s all the time they got. An avalanche of over 200,000 tons (1 million cubic meters) of snow, ice and rocks plunged down the mountainside. The wooden barracks packed with groggy soldiers, was crushed under the weight of the avalanche, burying the 332 occupants. 229 were Kaiserschützen mountain infantry and 102 were a Bosnian support column. Only a fraction were pulled from the snow to safety. The other 270 were buried alive. Only 40 bodies were ever recovered. Among the survivors was a dazed Captain Schmid who escaped with injuries.
A second avalanche struck an Italian division of the 7th Alpini, overrunning their mountain barracks just to the south, killing hundreds of soldiers as well. December 13th marked Saint Lucia, a religious holiday for Italian Catholics. The Italians would call the disastrous day of the ‘Valanga Grande’ La Santa Lucia Nera, Saint Lucy’s Day.
All throughout December 1916, the explosions from tunnel-building and artillery fire took its toll, causing numerous other avalanches both large and small. According to some reports, both sides deliberately fired shells into the weakened snowpacks above each other in an attempt to bury the enemy. Entire regiments were lost in an instant. The bodies of some victims weren’t found until spring thaw if at all.
A complete estimate of the number of casualties from December 1916 is not possible. Historical records suggest at least 2,000 Italians and Austrians died that month between soldiers and civilians. Though the avalanches started on Wednesday the 13th, the term ‘White Friday’ was used to describe the disastrous series of days that followed. The best estimate is that between 9,000 and 10,000 soldiers died by the end of the winter due to avalanches.
Trench warfare – the so-called No Man’s Land between them – and the futile frontal assaults took their toll. Against this, the mountain war in Italy was a series of smaller battles. In subzero temps, men dug miles of tunnels through glacial ice. They hung rope ladders up rock faces to move soldiers onto higher and higher peaks, then hauled up an arsenal of heavy artillery, machine guns, flamethrowers and mustard gas. The avalanche “White Death” killed thousands. Yet the Alpine war remains one of the least-known battlefields of WWI, over-shadowed by the trenches of the Western Front.
Deadly fighting continued into late1918, with a total of 12 battles fought in this frozen terrain, mostly in Tyrol near the Isonzo River. When World War I finally ended, at 11:00pm on 11 November 1918 (the 11hour of the 11th day of the 11th month), the remaining, tired and cold troops from both sides, slowly climbed down the frozen mountains for their homes, leaving their artillery, equipment and buried dead behind. Altogether, White Friday caused the most deaths by avalanche in our world’s recorded history.
At 9:04 AM on December 6th, 1917, the most devastating man-made explosion, short of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb, occurred in the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. A French ship, the Mont Blanc, its hold packed with tons of war-bound munitions, caused the Great Halifax explosion after colliding with another vessel, the Norwegian Imo.
Why Halifax? In 1917, World War I still raged on in Europe. The port of Halifax was the departure port for Canadian transatlantic convoys leaving to supply the troops overseas. It was packed with ships carrying soldiers, supplies, and munitions across the Atlantic. In a matter of 3 short years, the small harbor town had grown into a world class port and major Canadian naval base.
That frigid December morning, the port city was swollen with people and a bee hive of activity. Canadian troops bound for battle in the trenches of France flooded the streets, hundreds of laborers trudged off to work, and children of all ages wandered off to their primary or secondary schools.
At 7:30 am on the morning of December 6th, the Mont Blanc left it anchorage and began cruising through the Halifax narrows. Its orders to join a military convoy that would escort it across the Atlantic Ocean. Unbeknownst to the average citizen, its cargo hold was packed with 2,300 tons of explosive picric acid, 200 tons of TNT, 35 tons of gasoline, and 10 tons of flammable gun cotton! At the exact same time, the Norwegian ship Imo left its Halifax pier bound for New York City to pick up its own load of relief supplies.
Navigating into or out of Halifax harbor required passage through a strait called the Narrows. Ships were expected to keep close to the starboard side of the channel, and pass oncoming vessels “port to port.” Francis Mackey, an experienced harbor pilot, was aboard the Mont-Blanc. At 8:45 am, Mackey saw the Imo approaching and gave a short blast of his ship’s signal whistle, indicating he had the right of way. Confusion ensued between the two closing ships with a series of misjudged maneuvers and further whistle blasts. There was no ship to ship radio back then, so all the captains could do was shout to their bridge crews, “What the hell does he think he’s doing?!“
The Imo struck the Mont Blanc near the bow on her starboard side. Although the collision was hardly severe, the shock waves set the picric acid drums in the hold ablaze and the fire quickly spread onboard the Mont Blanc. The captain and harbor pilot, aware of exactly what their cargo was, knew they now stood on a massive ticking time bomb! They attempted to alert the harbor of the peril of their burning ship, but were unsuccessful.
They launched their lifeboats and took refuge on the nearby shore of the narrows. The Mont Blanc was knocked off course by the collision and slowly coasted back towards Halifax. The ship burned for twenty minutes, sending pillars of black smoke pluming into the grey winter sky. It drifted back into the harbor until it bounced against Pier 6, at the busy, industrial end of Halifax. Burning pieces fell off, setting the pier ablaze as well.
The spectacle was thrilling and drew crowds of innocent spectators and dock workers, unaware of the immense danger simmering before their eyes. Only a handful of naval officers even knew of the Mont-Blanc’s explosive cargo, but there would be no time for any city-wide warning. A tugboat and the Halifax Fire Department quickly responded, positioning themselves near Pier 6.
Factories, warehouses, schools, homes and nearby ships were completely destroyed in the pressure wave of the blast. White-hot fragments of the Mont Blanc rained down on the city, crashing through buildings with enough force to embed themselves in cellars. Children who had stopped on their way to school, workmen lining factory windows, sailors in their ships, all died instantly.
The resulting shock wave of the Great Halifax Explosion shattered windows 50 miles away, blinding hundreds, and the explosion could be heard as far as Portland, Maine. Hardly a pane of glass in Halifax survived. In seconds, the majority of the city was reduced to ruins and rubble. Many who survived stumbled to their feet and thought the Germans must have bombed them.
Survivors’ injuries were frightful, including third degree burns and blindness from the flash, or embedded splintering glass. Rescue efforts began quickly, but hospitals and shelters were soon overwhelmed. All surviving buildings, including ships in the harbor, were commandeered as hospitals.
The colossal explosion destroyed the entire north end of Halifax, including more than 1,630 homes, many by the hundreds of fires that quickly spread. The blast killed more than 2,000 people, injuring another 9,000. The flash of the explosion blinded 200 alone. 6,000 survivors were left without shelter. The captain, pilot and crew of the Imo were all killed. About 250 bodies were too disfigured to be identified; many of the victims were simply never found. Rescue trains were dispatched from across eastern Canada, as well as the northeastern United States.
All the crew from the Mont Blanc, including Francis Mackey, survived. In the months that followed, both ships’ crews were judged equally at fault. Captain Aime Le Medec and pilot Francis Mackey of the Mont Blanc were held accountable and charged with manslaughter and criminal negligence. Later, the charges were dropped, because gross negligence causing death could not be proven in court.
In 1920, a Memorial Tower containing a carillon of bells, was erected at Fort Needham, overlooking the Halifax explosion site. The dedication was made by a young girl who had lost her entire family in the terrible blast. Every year since, at exactly 9:00 am on December 6th, the sweet sound of the carillon’s bells ring out over Halifax and the bay in memory of the victims of the terrible Mont Blanc explosion.
On October 23rd 1956, thousands of Hungarian workers and students flooded the streets of Budapest. With fists raised in defiance, they shouted for “Freedom from Soviet tyranny!” The students issued a declaration in Parliament Square called the Sixteen Points. It included demands for withdrawing Soviet troops, personal freedom, economic reform, eliminating the hated Secret Police, and removing their Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi. The Hungarian Revolution had begun.
Rákosi, appointed by Soviet Premier Josef Stalin himself, had presided over a decade-long, oppressive regime that finally brought people’s resentment to a boiling point. When crowds of unarmed civilians were gunned down by security forces 2 days later, the Rebellion became a Revolution, between ragtag armed rebels and heavily armed Soviet troops.
Protestors tore down a statue of Josef Stalin in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, dragged its metal carcass through the city before decapitating it for all the world to see. Soviet red star flags were ripped down from government buildings. Russian stores were painted with slogans “Ruszkik Haza!” (Russians, Go Home!).
The Soviet emblem, cut from the center of the Hungarian tricolor flag, became the new revolutionary banner. Communist leaders were arrested and publicly beaten. Although many called for peace and condemned the violence, reprisals against communist leaders continued. Communist henchmen suddenly reaped the wrath they had brutally sowed for over a decade under Stalin.
Poorly armed but fearless fighters, carrying only rifles and Molotov cocktails, proved surprisingly effective at knocking out some Soviet tanks. Young men and women with no military training managed to outmaneuver the Russian Red Army. Most of the Hungarian military, siding with the rebels, though reporting to Moscow, did nothing.
In response, the Communist Party sacked Rákosi. They appointed the more reform-minded Imre Nagy as the new leader, a politician who’d been dismissed for his open criticisms of Stalin. The Kremlin said it was simply a way to appease the Hungarian “hooligans.”
It was an offer Nagy reluctantly accepted, hoping at best to steer the uprising towards a peaceful end. He failed at first to connect with the shouting crowds – thousands massed in front of the neo-gothic Parliament building on the Danube River. But over the course of a week, Nagy underwent a remarkable transformation into a leader willing to sanction unprecedented and daring reforms.
Nagy restored peace by asking the Soviets to withdraw their troops from Hungary. Thousands of Russian troops had been stationed in Hungary since 1945. As another gesture of appeasement, the Kremlin agreed and the Red Army pulled out. But he pushed the revolt even further.
For a few weeks, it seemed like the rebels might actually pull this off. After a ceasefire was declared on October 28, the atmosphere in Budapest was euphoric as Soviet forces continued to withdraw. Images of triumphant rebels posing for pictures atop burnt Soviet tanks stunned the world.
On October 31, the Russian newspaper Pravda published a Kremlin declaration promising greater equality between the USSR and Hungary. The crisis seemed on the verge of being resolved in a way no-one in the world had dared to dream. On November 1st, Nagy took the dramatic step of declaring that Hungary would withdraw from the Soviet’s Warsaw Pact!
Even as Soviet forces retreated, victory was to be short-lived. Regardless of the Pravda statement, Nikita Khrushchev had already decided to restore strict order in Hungary with brute military force. Hungary would NOT become the 1st Soviet satellite behind the Iron Curtain to reject the Kremlin’s iron fist.
On November 4, Soviet troops launched Operation Whirlwind. Hundreds of Soviet tanks reversed course and invaded Hungary. They rolled back into Budapest in an overwhelming force to crush the rebellion, restore Communist order and install a new puppet leader. The Hungarians were stunned and unprepared for hundreds of Soviet tanks in the streets of Budapest.
Vicious street fighting broke out, but the Soviets’ greater power was undeniable. The Soviet military struck back with Stalin-like savagery. They poured reinforcements in, completely encircling the capital Budapest. Prime Minister Nagy announced the invasion to the nation in a grim broadcast, declaring:
“Our troops are fighting! The Government remains in place!”
Imre Nagy, 1956
The Red Army captured and executed the leaders of the Revolution; and eliminated the last pockets of resistance within a single week. They acted with immense brutality, killing even the wounded insurgents. Tanks dragged rebel bodies through the Budapest streets as a warning to the population. Resistance was futile.
At the end of the week, Budapest Radio burst out: “Russian MiG fighters are over Budapest! The Soviet infantry is advancing toward Parliament! We shall die for Hungary! Any news of help? Quickly, quickly please!” … then Budapest fell.
By November 7, Soviet forces had Janos Kádár, a former colleague of Nagy, take the oath of office in Parliament as the new Communist leader. The USSR’s brutality stunned the West. Much like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had pledged a retreat from Soviet-style repression, but the violent actions in Budapest proved otherwise.
U.S. President Eisenhower was deeply upset by the crushing of the Hungarian Revolution. He spoke out: “I feel with the Hungarian people. To all those suffering under communist slavery, let us say you can count on us.” But in the end, America and NATO countries never answered the Hungarian’s pleas and did nothing. Both sides in the Cold War were nuclear powers and the risk of all out World War III over one nation was far too great.
3,000 men, women and children were killed and 200,000 more fled to Austria in the west as refugees. The Communists arrested Nagy and found him guilty of treason. He was publicly executed by hanging, and buried in an unmarked prison yard grave. For the next three decades, to even mention the name of Imre Nagy was to risk incarceration, or worse.
Today, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 serves as a haunting symbol of martyrdom for all Hungarians. Though their revolution failed, they were the first to stand up against Soviet tyranny. The Soviet Union began to unravel in the late 1980s. In 1989, 33 years to the day, Hungary was officially and finally declared a Republic. Poland’s Solidarity party had already taken control from the Communists that summer. A month later in November, thousands of German citizens attacked another hated symbol of the Cold War – the Berlin Wall. It had not even been built when Budapest citizens first rose up against their Soviet oppressors. Czechoslovakia followed in December 1989 with its Velvet Revolution.
Every year, on October 23rd, Republic Day, the iconic Hungarian flag with hollow circles adorns the streets of Budapest and across the country. The Iron Curtain had fallen and the Cold War was finally over. Today, we sadly see the history of Soviet expansion repeat itself; this time under President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation’s invasions into neighboring Chechnya (1999), Crimea (2014), and Ukraine (2022).
Over the years, the name Typhoid Mary has become synonymous with any person spreading an infectious disease, whether knowingly or unknowingly. Today is no different as we used the term with the COVID pandemic. But there was a real-life woman and a tragic story behind that infamous name. Who was she and had how did she become so notorious?
Typhoid Mary was Mary Mallon, a healthy carrier of typhoid fever who caused several outbreaks in the early 1900s. She infected dozens in the New York City area, at least 3 of whom perished. Once identified as the source, she became demonized by both the press and public. Her nickname remains a disparaging term for anyone who knowingly or unknowingly spreads disease. Medically however, Mary was the 1st ‘healthy carrier’ of typhoid fever recognized in the US.
Mary Mallon was born in 1869 in Cookstown, Ireland. She emigrated alone to America in 1883, when she was just 15, living with an aunt and uncle. Like most Irish immigrant women, young Mary found a job as a servant in the homes of the wealthy. Mary realized she had a talent for cooking, which paid better than other positions like laundress or maid. Working as a cook however, she left a trail of disease wherever she worked.
Typhoid fever is caused by the bacteria Salmonella typhi, which causes a high fever, severe headaches, abdominal pain, and in the most extreme cases, death. In the early 1900’s, it killed about 1 in 10, or a 10% mortality rate. The disease is spread through contaminated water and food, so generally, typhoid was a disease of the poor. Vaccines were still in their infancy at that time in America. No healthy carriers had been documented in the United States … YET.
In the summer of 1906, New York banker Charles Warren took his family on a much anticipated vacation. They rented a lovely summer home in Oyster Bay, Long Island. The Warrens hired none other than Mary Mallon to be their summer cook. In August, one of the daughters contracted typhoid fever. Soon after, Mrs. Warren, 2 maids, a gardener and yet another daughter became ill. A total of six of the 11 people in the household became sick.
The owner of the house hired sanitary engineer George Sober to investigate. They needed to prove the house wasn’t contaminated in order to rent it out again. At first, Sober blamed a bad batch of clams, but some of the victims hadn’t eaten them. Then he checked every inch of the property: the well, the water tank, the pantry, the privy, even the manure used to fertilize the gardens. They all checked out fine so the source must have been a human carrier.
Sober narrowed the culprit down to the cook, Mary Mallon, who’d left the family’s employ at the end of the summer. He even pinpointed which meal had contaminated the victims. Most foods that a cook handles are raised to temperatures sufficient to make them harmless. However, one hot Sunday, Mary prepared a summer dessert which everybody loved, ice-cream with freshly cut peaches.
In 1902, when Mallon worked in the summer home of a wealthy NY lawyer, typhoid struck 7 out of 9 people, leaving only Mary and the owner standing. Mallon had worked at 7 jobs in 7 years in which 22 people had contracted typhoid, including one young girl who died. No one ever suspected the cook. Sober knew this was more than coincidence; but needed stool and blood samples to prove it.
Mary turned out to be a hard woman to find as she moved around so much. In March 1907, after a four-month search, Sober finally caught up with her. What he found horrified him. Mary was working as a cook again in a house on Park Avenue on the east side. The laundress had just been taken to the Presbyterian Hospital with typhoid fever and the only child, a daughter, was dying of it.
George Sober met Mary in the kitchen and explained as clearly as possible that she was inadvertently spreading typhoid to her employers. He then asked for samples of her urine, stools, and blood to test. That’s when George Sober got his first glimpse of Mary Mallon’s famous temper. She cursed at him, seized a carving knife and stepped towards him. A shocked Sober ran back down the long hall, through an iron gate, and onto the sidewalk.
The next day, he confronted Mallon again, this time at a sad boarding house where she had frequent visits with a ‘disreputable gentleman.’ Sober tried again to explain that although she wasn’t ill, Mary was spreading the germs that caused typhoid. But Mary erupted, shouting expletives I can’t type here and angrily denied it all. She insisted she’d never had the disease, and was livid at such an unfair allegation.
Sober feared she’d leave her Park Avenue job and vanish into the city again, sickening and even killing others. He convinced the NYC Health Department to take her into custody. A female inspector, Dr. Josephine Baker, paid Mallon a visit and tried to persuade her to cooperate, but Mary slammed the door in her face. The next day, a Health Department ambulance with a police detachment arrived to arrest Mallon.
Mary was ready though, a long kitchen fork in her hand. She poked it at Dr. Baker, who stumbled back, bumping into the policeman. In the confusion, the resourceful Mary disappeared. The police searched the house, eventually finding footprints in the backyard leading to a chair propped by a fence. They spent 5 hours searching the neighborhood until one cop spotted a scrap of blue calico caught in the door of a closet.
Mary came out swearing and fighting, both of which she could do with great vigor. Baker made another effort to talk to her sensibly, but it was no use. She was convinced the law was persecuting her and insisted she’d done nothing wrong. The policemen lifted her into the ambulance and Baker had to sit on her all the way to the hospital.
In custody, Mallon’s stools tested positive for typhoid, yet she remained convinced of her innocence. Sober visited her in the isolation ward at Parker Hospital. He knew she hadn’t been running around the city intentionally making people sick. Nevertheless, bad hygiene caused her to spread the germs accidentally. He offered to set her free if she agreed to improve her hygiene. Mary declined in classic fashion – she rose from her chair, entered the toilet, and slammed the door shut.
Sober later described Mary Mallon as five feet six, blond hair with Irish blue eyes, a healthy complexion and a very determined jaw line. She had a fit figure albeit on the heavy side. She prided herself on her work endurance and had a determined walk (and mind). She could read and write in a large, bold hand, seldom missing the daily paper.
She stayed in a cottage built for the hospital’s superintendent, with a living room, kitchen, and bathroom – equipped with gas, electricity, and plumbing. It was likely the best she’d ever lived in, but she was isolated. The hospital delivered food, she cooked and ate alone in her cottage.
Mary Mallon had been taken by force, against her will, and was held without trial. So could the government lock her up indefinitely? The Board of Health was empowered to “remove to a proper place, any person sick with any contagious or infectious disease.” But this was written before anyone knew of “healthy carriers.” Still, to many, locking up poor Mary just seemed wrong.
Mary believed she was unfairly persecuted. She couldn’t understand how she could have spread disease when she herself was healthy.
“I never had typhoid in my life, and have always been healthy. Why should I be banished like a leper and compelled to live in solitary confinement?”
Mary Mallon
During Mallon’s quarantine, the hospital attempted to treat her, but nothing seemed to work. It seemed she was destined to remain a carrier for life. In 1909, after 2 years in confinement, she sued for release, on the grounds that she’d been denied due process and had never been charged with a crime. “This contention that I am a perpetual menace is not true. I have committed no crime and I am treated like an outcast—a criminal.”
During Mallon’s quarantine, health officials had analyzed her stool samples once a week. The samples came back mostly positive for typhoid (120 of 163). The judge ruled in favor of the health department and Mallon, now popularly known as “Typhoid Mary” in the press, would stay in the isolated cottage on North Brother Island.
In February of 1910 however, a new Health Commissioner decided that Mallon could go free – as long as she agreed to NEVER work as a cook again. Anxious to regain her freedom, Mary accepted the conditions in an affidavit, stating that she’d also take hygienic precautions to protect those with whom she came in contact.
Mallon promised to check in with the Health Department every 3 months. She immediately broke that promise. None of the other domestic jobs available to a woman in 1910 paid as well as cook, and the working conditions for a factory worker was much less desirable. Plus Mary STILL did not believe she carried typhoid fever.
George Sober described a hot-tempered, stubborn person. She never held a job more than a few months, moved often, and had trouble keeping friends. The other servants said she socialized with them very little. Plus Mary possessed that violent temper. She bounced from job to job, finding work via advertisements and employment agencies.
Sober never found any of her relatives in America or Ireland, and Mary never mentioned any. A nurse at the hospital managed to get close enough to learn that she’d had lovers, but met only silence when she pressed for more details. Mary sent for no one when she was incarcerated, and no one came forward after her death.
Doctors tried for years to convince her that, even though perfectly healthy, her body hosted the deadly bacteria, but she refused to believe them. She neglected basic hygiene, even when doctors urged her to wash her hands more often. Mary didn’t run around New York infecting people like some deranged sociopath, she just didn’t believe the science.
Mary had no intentions of following the health officials’ orders. Not working as a cook pushed her into other domestic positions which simply did not pay as well. Still feeling healthy, Mary never believed she could spread typhoid. Mallon tried being a laundress, but eventually went back to working as a cook!
The agencies that placed cooks in rich households knew Mallon by sight, so she instead worked in restaurants, hotels, and hospitals, where she risked exposing even larger numbers of people. About 84 subsequent cases are attributed to Mary Mallon, but Sober suspects many more went unaccounted for.
In 1915, George Sober got a disturbing call from an obstetrician at the Sloane Hospital for Women. A typhoid outbreak had struck and 25 people became sick and 2 had died. Evidence pointed to a recently-hired cook, Mary Brown. The doctor told Sober the staff had jokingly nicknamed her Typhoid Mary. Sober immediately recognized Mallon’s description and handwriting. When the Health Department came for her this time, she didn’t fight.
The public had shown Mary some sympathy during her first confinement because she was an unwitting carrier. All of that sympathy vanished this time. Typhoid Mary knew she was a carrier and knowingly caused pain and death. Using an alias made people feel that Mallon knew she was guilty and had even acted criminally.
A much more subdued Mary Mallon spent the last 23 years of her life in quarantine on North Brother Island. The city continued to provide her the cottage and food for free. Mallon was even allowed to make regular visits to the mainland to shop. She helped around the tuberculosis hospital, gaining the title “Hospital Helper” in 1922.
Sober said that in her later years, she had lost the energy she possessed when younger. Mallon suffered a major stroke on Christmas morning 1938 that left her paralyzed. She spent the final 6 years of her life in the hospital, unable to walk, and died of pneumonia in November 1938. She was only 69. Her funeral offered a final demonstration of the lonely life Typhoid Mary had led. Only 9 came to her funeral mass at St. Luke’s Chapel, and none of them went to her grave site.
Ironically, a vaccine for typhoid fever was developed in England in 1896. It was not widely used by doctors however until World War I, two decades later. Too late for poor Mary.
So why is Mary Mallon so infamously remembered? Why was she the only carrier isolated for life? Perhaps her very identity contributed. She received prejudice not only for being Irish and a woman, but also for being a poor servant, unmarried, and childless. Though Mallon was the first carrier identified, she was not the only healthy carrier of typhoid during that age. By the time Mallon died, over 400 other healthy typhoid carriers had been identified in New York City alone , with none being quarantined but Typhoid Mary.
When most people hear the word amber they might think about the popular Jurassic Park movies, where dinosaur DNA was discovered. But the precious stone has been prized for centuries, most especially by the former Russian Empire. Their famous Amber Room was made with TONS of it. After several back and forth “exchanges” between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia over the centuries, both friendly and hostile, it has today quite simply vanished! Dubbed by historians as “the Eighth Wonder of the World,” where it is today is one of the greatest mysteries of World War II.
Since Roman times, the area of Germany formerly known as Prussia has been one of the world’s largest producers of the golden, fossilized tree sap, amber. The “Amber Room” was built between 1701 and 1709 by Fredrick I of Prussia in the Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin as a gift for his wife. It was designed by a German baroque sculptor and constructed by a Danish amber expert. Craftsmen set colored amber onto gold leaf wall panels to create intricate mosaics, topped off with jasmine, jade, and onyx. Long before electricity, imagine scores of candelabras lit within, and the golden gallery must have gleamed like a room in God’s heavenly palace.
In 1716, the next Prussian King, Frederick William I, presented it to Peter as a gift to cement the new Prussian-Russian peace alliance. So the glorious Amber Room’s panels were painstakingly disassembled and shipped to Russia on multiple horse carts in 18 huge crates. There it was installed by the Tzar for his viewing pleasure in St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace.
And there is sat for 40 years until in 1755, when Tzarina Elizabeth ordered the room disassembled again and moved to her Catherine Palace in Pushkin. Italian designer Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli spent the next 10 years, redesigning the room to fit into its new, larger space, adding 6 more tons of amber, shipped to Russia from Berlin.
The room now covered about 180 square feet and positively glowed with brilliance. The wall’s amber panels were backed with gold leaf, making the room worth about $142 million at the time. Today it would be worth half a billion euros. The Amber Room was used as a meditation chamber for Tzarina Elizabeth, then a drawing room for Catherine the Great, and a finally a trophy room for Tsar Alexander II. And so it sat again, for the next 200 years, surviving the Russian Revolution, until World War II.
Then in June 1941, Adolf Hitler launched his infamous Operation Barbarossa, sending 3 million German soldiers on an ill-fated invasion of the Soviet Union. The Nazis notoriously ransacked every country they invaded, from Holland to France to Poland, looting thousands of priceless art treasures. In Russia, this would include the illustrious Amber Room. Hitler believed it was made by Germans for Germans alone and not to be shared. Soviet Premier Josef Stalin disagreed with him.
They first attempted to disassemble and hide the precious walls. But the dry and brittle amber began to crumble! What could the panicked curators do? They instead foolishly tried hiding the room behind hastily applied plaster and wallpaper. Leningrad fell in 1941, and the ruse didn’t fool the Nazis for long. They knew the room was somewhere in the palace and eventually found it. They disassembled the Amber Room in just 36 hours, packed it up in 27 crates, and shipped it west by train. The room was reassembled this time in the Königsberg’s Castle on Germany’s Baltic Coast. Within a month, local German newspapers boasted of an exhibition at the castle for Nazi elite.
Then in late 1943, the tables were turned. Soviet Russian forces were now approaching Germany from the eastern front. Hitler gave the order that “cultural goods of priority” should be moved from Königsberg for safe keeping. The castle’s director, Alfred Rohde, was ordered to immediately dismantle the Amber Room once again and place it in crates for immediate transport.
What happened after that remains a tantalizing mystery. In August 1944, Allied bombing raids destroyed much of the city, including Königsberg Castle. Was the Amber Room still inside, but now safely deep in a dungeon? Some think so, others believe the Nazis had ample opportunity to get it out in time. Others believe witnesses who said they saw the Amber Room’s crates being loaded into the hold of a German naval ship, perhaps the MV Wilhelm Gustloff. That ship however now lies on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, sunk by a Soviet submarine!
Optimists still hope the Amber Room is intact in a dungeon, cave or mine somewhere, awaiting discovery by intrepid adventurers. Since the end of World War II, art historians and treasure hunters alike have searched and searched. It has never been found. Most agree it was likely lost in the fires that consumed Königsberg Castle at the close of WWII. The site is now covered by a massive building known as the “House of Soviets,” built in 1960 by the East Germans. The grounds underneath have never been thoroughly investigated.
In 1997, a gold framed, mosaic marble fragment from the Amber Room was discovered at a German art auction and confiscated by officials. It’s believed to have come from a Nazi officer who stole it while he was transporting the room from Russia to Germany. The fragment and another piece were formally returned to St. Petersburg in the Russian Federation in 2000.
Today over 70 years later, 3 amateur investigators believe they may have found the lost treasure. They think it resides in Prince’s Cave in the Hartenstein hills near Dresden, once used by Nazi scientists. They claim evidence of a large, unexplored Nazi bunker. The team is attempting to raise enough money for a detailed examination. We shall see, time will tell.
If the Amber Room did somehow survive, it’s likely that the Nazis hid it underground in a cave, mine, dungeon or bunker. Experts warn that in this prolonged, damp environment, the amber could easily deteriorate. Even before it was stolen in 1941, the Amber Room was badly in need of restoration as the amber pieces were falling out.
Rather than continued to search, Soviet Russia decided to rebuild the entire Amber Room in 1979. Using old photos and original drawings, the Russian government completed a recreation of the Amber Room. Due to a lack of skilled labor, it was not until 2004 however, that the new version was revealed to the public. Ironically, when the Russian organization ran out of money, a German company, EON, raised the remaining funds necessary to complete the project. Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder unveiled it together.
So a German made treasure >> given to a Russia Tzar >> stolen by German Nazis >> recreated by Russians >> with help of German money is once again alive, even if not the original. Such was, and is, the complicated relationship of these two great nations over time. This new ‘Amber Room’ can be viewed by the public in St. Petersburg’s Catherine Palace.
The original Amber Room, however, remains lost to history … at least for now.
America’s very first whistleblowers were not the British, but actually 10 American naval officers during the Revolutionary War. They bravely reported improper behavior by the Continental Navy’s most powerful officer, their superior, to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. In February 1777, those 10 men secretly gathered below deck on the USS Warren to sign a petition documenting numerous abuses by their commander, Commodore Esek Hopkins.
They understood all too well they could be branded by congress and the people as Traitors, rather than Patriots. Hopkins had been appointed the 1st Commander of the Continental Navy in 1775. And they knew he possessed powerful connections in Philadelphia. His brother Stephen was a well-known signer of the Declaration of Independence! They wrote collectively:
‘He is guilty of such crimes as to render him unfit for the command he now occupies.‘
The officers then detailed the commodore’s misconduct and poor character in personal affidavits. They worried sailors under him would quit serving their new country. They detailed how a key British warship had eluded capture through Hopkins’ incompetence.
‘We know him to be a man of no principles, and quite unfit for the important trust given him.’
The men accused him of cursing the Founding Fathers as ‘a pack of damned fools’ and treating British prisoners in an inhumane, barbarous manner. This was in direct violation of General George Washington’s orders that British captives be ‘well and humanely treated.
‘Hopkins conversation is at times so wild, and orders so unsteady, that we have thought he was not in his senses.’
So that night, Marine Captain John Grannis left his post on the Warren, which was docked at the time at Providence, RI. He rode his horse 235 miles over several days to Philadelphia to deliver the petition and affidavits directly to the new Continental Congress. It was a risky move for an officer who had basically just jumped ship.
The Continental Congress called Captain Grannis himself to testify. ‘It is generally feared on board the fleet that he commands would be so imprudent that the ships could be foolishly lost.’ Grannis reported how British prisoners had been placed in irons and held back from prisoner exchanges.
Three of the 10 whistle-blowers felt obligated to meet with Commodore Hopkins while Grannis was away, and inform him of their petition and affidavits. Hopkins learned 3rd Lieutenant Richard Marvin had been the lead officer who organized the complaints against him. He had Marvin tried aboard his ship and court-martialed in April 1777.
Hopkins never bothered to give the Continental Congress a rebuttal to the whistleblowers’ accusations. But when he was formally dismissed from the Navy, he filed a criminal libel lawsuit against his 10 accusers, with damages set at £10,000. Only Marvin and another officer, Samuel Shaw, were arrested – the rest were still on duty at sea.
The 2 defendants turned to Congress for help as they were not wealthy men, but firmly believed they were doing their duty as naval officers. The president of Congress informed them that reasonable expenses for their defense would be provided. They also authorized the public release of records relating to Commodore Hopkin’s removal.
“It is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States, to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds or misdemeanors committed by persons in the service of these States,”
U.S. Whistleblower Protection Act, 1788
It was approved unanimously in July 1788. Marven and Shaw prevailed in court, and the Continental Congress kept their promise and paid all their legal bills.
Nearly a century later comes a second example. During the US Civil War, the Union army relied heavily on private contractors for basic necessities like uniforms, shoes, rifles and gunpowder. Some of those contractors were unscrupulous profiteers, often cutting dangerous corners and providing substandard products.
Soldiers complained about moth-eaten blankets and thin wool uniforms that would rot in the damp rain. Corrupt defense contractors sold the Union Army spoiled rations that gave soldiers in the field scurvy and dysentery. They provided horses that were wasted, lame, and in some cases even blind!
War profiteering and outright criminal fraud crippled both the Union and Confederate armies. ‘You can sell anything to the government at any price,’ boasted one crook who made millions. During the war, the government didn’t have enough inspectors to ferret out all the fraud, so Congress came up with a novel idea. It would provide an incentive for employees to turn in their own companies.
Congress wrote the False Claims Bill in the winter of 1863. The whistleblowers, then called ‘relators,’ could sue a contractor on behalf of the US, if they had personal proof of the scam. If successful, plaintiffs were entitled to receive HALF the money recovered. The FCA’s sponsor was Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan. He strongly believed that paying rewards to whistleblowers was the best way to uncover the largest fraudulent schemes.
It contained qui tam provisions that allowed private citizens to sue, on the government’s behalf, companies or individuals that were defrauding the federal government. Qui tam is short for a Latin phrase meaning “he who brings an action for the state as well as for himself.” Congress passed, and Lincoln signed, the FALSE CLAIMS ACT in March 1863. It proved effective at protecting US interests and hold those who stole from the US liable.
Decades later, the False Claims Act would allow whistleblowers in the defense industry to come forward. And it worked just as well against drug manufacturers, power companies, and big tobacco. These led to the more famous, recent whistleblowers of the last few decades. These include such well-known names as:
And of course, the Whistleblower saga continues with today’s more modern Washington scandals, conspiracies, and ‘witch hunts,’ whether Republican or Democrat. It takes both courage and a strong sense patriotism for such people to step forward, for regardless of their legal protection, they are rarely received well.
During an astonishing 6-week period in 1989, between November 17th and December 29th, a non-violent Velvet Revolution took place in Communist Czechoslovakia. It overthrew the 44 year old Soviet backed regime put in place by Josef Stalin at the end of World War II, and replaced it with a free democracy. It was nicknamed the Velvet Revolution because it was a successful, non-violent rebellion.
By the 2nd half of the 1980s, the Cold War was slowly thawing. The Soviet Union was a bit more open, thanks to Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s Glasnost, which opened the USSR’s government to debate, and Perestroika, which reformed Soviet politics and economy. Unfortunately, the same was NOT true in Czechoslovakia. Their hard-line Communist Party stopped Gorbachev’s reforms in their tracks. Dissidence was still not tolerated and political activists were imprisoned. Gustav Husak, in power since 1968, would allow NO reforms.
First with Poland’s Solidarity toppling their Communist party in September elections, followed by the peaceful conversion of Hungary from Communism to democracy in October. Finally, the shocking fall of the East German Berlin Wall on November 9th. Regardless, the Czechoslovak Communist Party continued to carry out their hard-line policies. That continued repression, combined with the slow collapse of the Soviet Bloc, inspired Czechoslovaks to demand change from their government as well.
But let’s step back for just a bit. Remember Czechoslovakia only became an independent country in 1918 after World War I, when the losing Austro-Hungarian Empire was carved up like a Sunday roast. Following its unfortunate inclusion into Hitler’s Nazi Germany during World War II, Czechoslovakia became part of the Communist bloc behind Stalin’s Iron Curtain in 1945. Twenty long years of repression followed.
Then a glimmer of hope. During the ‘Prague Spring’ of 1968, a reform effort swept through the government. Human rights and a free press were actually encouraged. People were able to openly criticize Communist rule, travel more freely, and form new political parties! Though modest, this was far too much for the Kremlin. In August, thousands of Soviet troops rolled into the country. A young playwright and poet named Vaclav Havel, spoke out against the invasion on Radio Free Europe. Soviet occupation led to the worst of the East European regimes with all the reforms killed.
A small underground movement of resistors managed to survive. Opposition was mostly symbolic though because of the severe repression. One example was that rock music became a medium for political dissent. This included The Plastic People, who wrote protest songs in English. The band members were thrown into prison in 1976.
In 1977, a non-violent, pro-democracy group calling themselves Charter 77, wrote a Manifesto calling on the Communist regime to live up to international human rights demands. One of its founding members was Vaclav Havel. This prompted the government to imprison its members and ban Charter 77. Havel was sentenced to five years of hard labor. Fast forward now another 2 decades to 1989.
A student march took place marking the 50th anniversary of the death of a student Nazi protestor, Jan Opletal, in 1939. However, it quickly turned into an anti-Communist protest, with students carrying banners and chanting slogans. Riot police stopped the students marching from the National Cemetery to Wenceslas Square. A stand-off ensued in which the students peacefully offered flowers to the riot police. They were met with tear gas and water cannons. The police began beating the young students with night sticks. 167 were hospitalized.
The demonstration and violence inspired workers’ unions and other civic groups to also organize. Theaters became dissident meeting places where activists devised strategies and held open discussions. At one meeting at Prague’s Magic Lantern Theatre on November 19th, a group calling themselves the Civic Forum was established as a collection of spokespeople for the democracy. Former members of Charter 77, including a much older Vaclav Havel, came together along with other dissidents to unite their opposition against the Communist Party.
They boldly demanded the resignation of the Communist government, the release of political prisoners, and investigations into the Nov. 17th police brutality. They chose Vaclav Havel as one of its leaders, who used his literary talents to craft the movement’s messaging, challenging the government in ways that captured the public’s imagination. Havel showed the deadening effects of Communism on ordinary people and their lives.
The next day, a sister initiative – Public Against Violence – was born in Bratislava, Slovakia. Both were joined en masse by Czechoslovak citizens – from university students to factory workers. Subsequent marches, protests, and strikes took place in the following week – too large to be silenced by police brutality. This barrage of nonviolent activism had a profound effect on the people. Even larger mass protests were held in several Czech and Slovak cities. People shook their keys in the air as a symbol for change.
It took 2 weeks before for the state-run media began broadcasting reports of what was actually occurring in the cities. In the meantime, students traveled to countryside towns and villages to rally support outside the capital. Vaclav Havel became the face of the opposition. He knew that many more would have to join them in order for the movement to succeed. So the Civic Forum sought to organize a General Strike for November 27th that would span ALL of Czechoslovakia.
You’re probably asking yourself ‘What were the hard-line Communist leaders plotting in the meantime?!’ Well, they were unprepared to deal with such a huge popular unrest. As the mass demonstrations continued, more and more citizens supported the general strikes. The enormous mass demonstrations – up to a million people in a country with less than 16 million – were a collective show of defiance. An emergency session of the Central Committee was called where the Communist Party President resigned, and a relatively unknown elected.
On November 25 and 26, massive demonstrations of over 750,000 people took place at Letna Park in Prague. On Monday, Nov. 27th, 75% of the Czechoslovak population participated in a 2 hour General Strike, showing the mass support behind the Civic Forum and People Against Violence. The strike finally showed the Communist regime that the people would no longer quietly obey and more importantly, the government was powerless to stop them.
Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec was forced to hold talks with the Civic Forum, led by Vaclav Havel. That day, they presented their list of demands: to form a new coalition government and to DELETE the leading role of the Communist Party from the Constitution. Adamec agreed to them all and personally guaranteed that no violence would be used against peaceful citizens.
A new compromise government was formed including only 9 members of the Communist Party with 7 new, non-communist Ministers, all of whom were members of the Czech or Slovak forums. This new government was named by president Gustav Husak on December 10th who, under threat of yet another general strike, went on national television that evening to announce his resignation.
The Velvet Revolution has succeeded. After Christmas, on December 28th, at the joint session of the two Federal Houses, Alexander Dubcek – who led the ill-fated Prague Spring in 1968 – was elected Speaker. One day later, parliament elected Vaclav Havel, President of Czechoslovakia!
Despite lacking serious political experience, the new parliament was able to fill many of the gaps in human freedoms, private ownership, and business law. The military was transferred from communist to democratic control. They also laid the framework for the first Free Elections in 44 years. The results of the following year’s elections were basically a referendum on ending Communism in a sweeping victory for democracy.
After the 1990 elections, efforts to craft a new democratic constitution were stalled by the political and economic differences between Czechs and Slovaks. Some Czechs saw the poorer Slovakia as a drag on the economy. Slovaks saw the Czechs as having too much power and control in Prague. This division led to the “Velvet Divorce,” peacefully creating 2 independent nations: the Czech and Slovak Republics in December 1992. Vladimir Meclar became Prime Minister of the new Slovakia. The once mighty Soviet Union eventually collapsed in December 1991 under Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 1997, at the urging of President Havel, the Plastic People reunited. In 2009, they were honored at Prague’s National Theater as part of the 20 year celebration of the success of the Velvet Revolution. Vaclav Havel remained in office as President until 2003 and passed away in 2011 at age 75. Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia have remained democratic nations ever since.