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Milestones

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Praefectus Praetorio said:
Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp, was liberated by the Red Army.
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It is a strange coincidence, but over the weekend I played the PS4 game 'Detroit: Become Human'. The final chapters of the game are dependant on the choices you made in the game before and how successfully you played it. However, I messed up some quick time events which resulted in...

...two characters being arrested by the authorities and taken to a place that creepily resembles an the concentration camps we know from history books.

Here is a video of the level (WARNING: contains MAJOR spoilers from the game!):

Luckily, I managed both of them to escape in time. Still, the whole sequence left a lasting impression on me, especially how close it was to the stories you hear/read from that time. The whole time I was changing between the thoughts 'WTF? They actually made a video game level out of this?' and 'This is so depressing!' - And the worst thing about this is: Something very similar happened to thousands of real people less than 100 years ago!
 
madiosi said:
Holocaust running now in the German TV
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The other day they were showing 'Schindler's List' on Kabel 1. Some light entertainment for friday evening's prime time... not!
 
wilhelm-gustloff.jpeg​

At 12.30 pm on 30 January 1945, the erstwhile 'Strength Through Joy' cruise liner, 'Wilhelm Gustloff' departed Danzig as part of Operation Hannibal, the biggest organised evacuation in history. The civilian population of East Prussia was fleeing in the face of the advancing Red Army. The 'Gustloff' was designed to carry approximately 1 500 passengers and 400 crew. On 30 January 1945, there were an estimated 10 600 souls aboard, including a small number of military personnel.

At 9.00 pm the ship was steaming through the Baltic which was freezing with ice floes forming. The navigation lights were illuminated to avoid collision with an inbound Kriegsmarine minesweeper flotilla. This made the 'Gustloff' visible to the Russian submarine S-13, which fired three torpedoes into the liner, causing her to capsize and sink in 50 minutes. Most of the lifeboats were frozen in their davits and only nine could be launched.

996 survivors were rescued by German vessels. Somewhere between 9 300 - 9 600 people died as a result of the attack, which represents the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking, ever.
 
100 years ago today, Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color bar in Baseball's Major Leagues, was born. He was the grandson of slaves in Georgia and a star at several sports in college, including American football, basketball and track, as well as baseball. He fought on and off the field for civil rights, including being court-martialed during his time in the Army for refusing to move to the back of the bus. Here is a photo of him and his wife with Dr. Martin Luther King.merlin_149596338_a8eb9b38-955b-4078-94bb-39c1081132a8-jumbo.jpg

In those days, baseball was segregated-black players were relegated to the Negro League, where the pay and facilities were decidedly inferior to those for white players, despite the fact that many of the players would have been stars in the Major Leagues. Robinson proved that when Branch Rickey signed him to play with the Brooklyn (now Los Angeles) Dodgers in 1947, at the age of 28, where he immediately became a star, earning a place in the Hall of Fame. He died much too young at the age of 53 in 1972.
 
1 February 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia breaks up during re-entry over Texas, killing all seven crew members.
https://www.space.com/19436-columbia-disaster.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/science/space/31NASA.html
http://www.fox13news.com/news/space/space-shuttle-columbia-crew
My brother and I were getting ready to take his son, then 7, to the Gasparilla Day Parade (it's kinda Tampa's Marde Gras) when we heard the news. There was some talk of canceling the parade, but the mayor and organizers decided it wouldn't be possible on such short notice. We went ahead and had a pretty good time but were aware that there were more important things going on elsewhere. In those days before smartphones, I bet most of the people there had no idea what had happened.
 
Naraku said:
On a totally unrelated note:
It has come to my attention that we missed an import event this past Monday...
Squirrel Appreciation Day
https://nationaldaycalendar.com/squirrel-appreciation-day-january-21/
So let me say, to Racing Rodent, we appreciate you. I hope you enjoyed your special day.
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Praefectus Praetorio said:
You're putting us on right? There's no such day. Right?
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And today (I incedentally stumbled on this), 2 February, is Groundhog Day; The Rodent's nephew is waking up!:)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundhog_Day
 
bobinder said:
996 survivors were rescued by German vessels. Somewhere between 9 300 - 9 600 people died as a result of the attack, which represents the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking, ever.
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And the majority of the causalties were civilian - German refugees that fled west when Russia attacked Eastern Prussia. I only learned a few years ago that my grandmother - who was 14 back then and lived near Königsberg (Kaliningrad today) - was supposed to be on that ship too, but she missed it since she fled on foot and was delayed.
 
windar said:
100 years ago today, Jackie Robinson, the man who broke the color bar in Baseball's Major Leagues, was born. He was the grandson of slaves in Georgia and a star at several sports in college, including American football, basketball and track, as well as baseball. He fought on and off the field for civil rights, including being court-martialed during his time in the Army for refusing to move to the back of the bus. Here is a photo of him and his wife with Dr. Martin Luther King.View attachment 667924

In those days, baseball was segregated-black players were relegated to the Negro League, where the pay and facilities were decidedly inferior to those for white players, despite the fact that many of the players would have been stars in the Major Leagues. Robinson proved that when Branch Rickey signed him to play with the Brooklyn (now Los Angeles) Dodgers in 1947, at the age of 28, where he immediately became a star, earning a place in the Hall of Fame. He died much too young at the age of 53 in 1972.
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Willie Stargell, a star with the Pittsburgh Pirates and a big reason they won a pennant, used to talk about being on the road and not being able to stay in the same hotels as the white players. At one point he stayed in the house of a guy who raised worms, and he always remembered the smell. PeeWee Reese of the Dodgers, and the "colorful" (an incredible sleazy character) Leo Durocher, the manager, were instrumental in helping Mr. Robinson deal with all the shit. Stan "the Man" Musial of the Cardinals, also went out of his way to associate with black players. Danny Murtaugh, the manager of the Pirates, took some heat one year when his starting line-up with his best players featured NO whites. People complain about racism now (and I can understand that a black person has to deal with things on a daily basis that a white person would feel are rare these days), but back then it was overt and ugly and mostly accepted. Supposedly the great (and gorgeous) Lena Horne was only cast in scenes that could be edited out when a movie played in the south. The armed forces weren't integrated until "Give 'em hell Harry" ordered it in 1948--you could still fight, die, and get medals, you just couldn't do it with the white guys. The real irony is that black players now gravitate toward football and basketball, and "America's pastime" is full of people who speak Spanish (or Japanese or Korean--those guys often need interpreters).
 
Frank Petrexa said:
The armed forces weren't integrated until "Give 'em hell Harry" ordered it in 1948--you could still fight, die, and get medals, you just couldn't do it with the white guys.
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During WWII, my forebears kept a bar in England, and a large US Army base was nearby. The (white) officer explained his troops were black, and there was no need to serve them if the publican did not want to. He was unhappy that they would mix with white folk, but UK licensing laws did not forbid it.

From what I gathered, they were frequent customers, their trade was appreciated, and at war's end, a few stayed.
 
old slave said:
Aye!

"Did you fight in the war, mummy?"
"No dear, women didn't fight, we were needed at the bar to look after the troops. The GIs were so demanding, but the nylons were beautiful"
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Yes, but sometimes stubborn dedication to the cause overrode the bigotry. Captain Nancy Wake ("the White Mouse" to the Gestapo) of the SOE was undercover in occupied France. Noor Inayat Khan of the SOE was a radio operator in France as a liaison with the Resistance. She was eventually betrayed to the Gestapo and shot at Dachau in 1944. "Liberte'".
 
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