Andimba (Herman) Toivo Ya Toivo remained loyal to what made him the personification of the desire to live in an independent country governed by, and for, its people.
The humble carrier pigeon played a huge role in World War I and saved many lives. But despite huge technological advances, animals are still suffering and dying in modern wars.
In the years leading up to World War II, Ivan Maisky and Winston Churchill developed a close friendship.
Courtesy of the Voskressenski family
The Soviet ambassador to London showed that charm and contacts can trump espionage when it comes to gathering information.
Chinese ceramics recovered from the 9th century Belitung shipwreck in Indonesia, now held at the Asian Civilisations Museum (Singapore)
ArtScience Museum Singapore
Archaeologists this week found that more than half of of HMAS Perth, a WWII wreck in Indonesia, has disappeared. It’s now a race to protect the millions of other wrecks and sunken cities lying under the oceans.
A visitor pauses at the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.
AP Photo/J. David Ake, File
There are about 59,000 cards in archival boxes from the Red Cross’s WW2 enquiry service. While their language is impersonal, the golden rule was to provide solace to soldiers’ families, and fast.
Does Japan’s moral education system leave any room for students to appreciate diversity and think critically?
Ajari/flickr
The changes required of a textbook that referred to a bakery – an “inappropriate” form of Japanese culture – illustrate how the system falls short of its goals of deliberative and critical education.
The book provides an account of Primo Levi’s survival in Auschwitz.
Logaritmo/Wikimedia Commons
The imperative issued by Levi’s text is not that one should persist in seeing the human in the inhuman. It is more like its opposite: that one bear must witness to the inhuman in the human.
London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral during the great fire raid of December 29, 1940, during World War Two.
Shutterstock
For many centuries, Syrian society has included people of many faiths – Sunni and Shi'i Muslims, Christians and Druze. This past is important to know to understand the present.
In wartime, food and drink may be a weapon or embodiment of the enemy, but also ‘a token of hope, a soothing relief’. In East Timor, coffee has played a vital role.
The crosses at Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in France.
Jonathan Ebel
Jonathan Ebel, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Writings at the time of WWI aimed to construct a religiously diverse and conflicted America into a virtuous, Christian nation. This narrative continued in the cemeteries for the war heroes.
Basque children fleeing the Spanish Civil War arriving in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1937.
Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums
There has been little recognition of how western governments furthered separation of families with disabled children, through immigration policies that ignored postwar humanitarian ideals.
World War II poster.
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration