On this day in 1915, a prototype tank nicknamed Little Willie rolls off the assembly line in England. Little Willie was far from an overnight success. It weighed 14 tons, got stuck in trenches and crawled over rough terrain at only two miles per hour. However, improvements were made to the original prototype and tanks eventually transformed military battlefields.The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defence, championed the idea of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory. The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a "land boat" and organized a Landships Committee to begin developing a prototype. To keep the project secret from enemies, production workers were reportedly told the vehicles they were building would be used to carry water on the battlefield (alternate theories suggest the shells of the new vehicles resembled water tanks). Either way, the new vehicles were shipped in crates labeled "tank" and the name stuck.The first tank prototype, Little Willie, was unveiled in September 1915. Following its underwhelming performance--it was slow, became overheated and couldn’t cross trenches--a second prototype, known as "Big Willie," was produced. By 1916, this armored vehicle was deemed ready for battle and made its debut at the First Battle of the Somme near Courcelette, France, on September 15 of that year. Known as the Mark I, this first batch of tanks was hot, noisy and unwieldy and suffered mechanical malfunctions on the battlefield; nevertheless, people realized the tank's potential. Further design improvements were made and at the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, 400 Mark IV’s proved much more successful than the Mark I, capturing 8,000 enemy troops and 100 guns.Tanks rapidly became an important military weapon. During World War II, they played a prominent role across numerous battlefields. More recently, tanks have been essential for desert combat during the conflicts in the Persian Gulf.
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On this day in 1972, at the Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, a group of Palestinian terrorists storms the Olympic Village apartment of the Israeli athletes, killing two and taking nine others hostage. The terrorists, known as Black September, demanded that Israel release over 230 Arab prisoners being held in Israeli jails and two German terrorists. In an ensuing shootout at the Munich airport, the nine Israeli hostages were killed along with five terrorists and one West German policeman. Olympic competition was suspended for 24 hours to hold memorial services for the slain athletes.After being founded in 776 B.C. in ancient Greece, the first modern Olympics were held in Athens in 1896, with 13 countries and 311 athletes competing. The games were meant to foster peace and bring people together. Germany had hoped that the 1972 Olympics would be a celebration of peace, as it was the first time it had hosted the games since 1936, when Adolf Hitler, who used the games to promote his Aryan master race theory, was in power.The Munich Olympics opened on August 26, 1972, with 195 events and 7,173 athletes representing 121 countries. On the morning of September 5, Palestinian terrorists in ski masks ambushed the Israeli team. After negotiations to free the nine Israelis broke down, the terrorists took the hostages to the Munich airport. Once there, German police opened fire from rooftops and killed three of the terrorists. A gun battle erupted and left the hostages, two more Palestinians and a policeman dead.After a memorial service was held for the athletes at the main Olympic stadium, International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage ordered that the games continue, to show that the terrorists hadn't won. Although the tragedy deeply marred the games, there were numerous moments of spectacular athletic achievement, including American swimmer Mark Spitz's seven gold medals and teenage Russian gymnast Olga Korbut's two dramatic gold-medal victories.In the aftermath of the murders at the '72 Olympics, the Israeli government, headed by Golda Meir, hired a group of Mossad agents to track down and kill the Black September assassins. In 2005, Steven Spielberg made a movie, Munich, about these events.
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1942 - World War II: Vichy government implements a law to run the craftsmen who aged between 21 and 35 years for the expense of Germany.1981 - assassination of the French Ambassador in Lebanon Louis Delamar.1987 - judge the pilot Mathias Rust of prison with hard labor for four years because of the plane landing in Red Square in Moscow.1987-43 state or the Francophone community based projects for cooperation in the audiovisual field.1989 - dismissal of the Minister of Culture Wang Ming, who defended freedom of expression during the Tienanmen incident in Beijing.1995 - Floods in Morocco lead to the fall of the 81 people in Fez and Taza.ListenRead phonetically
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Crossing fingers comes from the pre-christian practice of Europe. Originally it was performed with two people crossing their index fingers in such a way that their fingers formed a solar cross. The solar cross was considered a symbol of perfect unity and at the point of intersection it was considered that there were beneficial spirits residing there. If a wish were made on the intersecting point of the solar cross then it (the wish) was anchored there until such time as the wish came true. Gradually the custom evolved until only one person was required to cross their index and middle fingers
Wherever your heart is, that is where you'll find your treasure.One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.You're in love. That makes you actually kind of boring to people who aren't in love.If you loved someone, you couldn’t let lies come between you. No matter what happened - even if you’d already lost each other forever - you owed each other the truth.You are my life. You're the only thing it would hurt to lose.I promise to love you forever - every single day of forever.After all, what was more important, in the end, than love?What was the point of having unending life if that life was without love?There's no good story without romance.
