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Friendly fire has always been a horrible partner of war-the Army estimated 12 to 14 percent of all deaths in World War II came from friendly fire--but this fact didn't make Laird feel any better. He felt like a monster.

According to Agatha, the Black Fleet's attack made no sense from an economic or political standpoint, so it had to have been provoked by some extraordinary event. What was it? What unusual, truly strange occurrence had happened lately that would have led the South to poke its head out from the den wherein it has been hunkered down?

The US Third Army's advance units were now only some 40 miles southwest of Prague-and Patton wanted to move to help her. The Prague rising had been inspired by the arrival of the Americans in Czechoslovakia and US forces did not want to see the insurgents being abandoned to their fate.

Having access to Western TV was a blessing, but also a curse. You got a vision of the broader world, but you also saw what that world thought about you. Conversations you wished to be part of; stereotypes and false narratives you wanted to correct but couldn't. All you could do was sit, stuck, staring at TV shows documenting your stuckness.

"....You say you've never seen the Blinkers before. Do I take that to mean that you've been to a place that still uses electricity?"
"I have," Trina said...."And you have too. There was electricity in your apartment on the day we got separated..."

Her ( Hannah Arendt's) political analysis might have been met with mute astonishment in America , the ravings of a lunatic Jewess, but in Europe in 1945 Germany was at last defeated. The massacre of the Jews now became apparent to the whole world. But too late; they had been virtually annihilated.

Through the centuries the river of movement flowed westward, and wave after wave of displaced nomads wandered into Europe. When the Huns, who were called "Hsiung-nu" in Chinese records, invaded southern Russia in 372, they defeated the Ostrogoths and set the Visigoths into flight. The Visigoths headed westward, sacked Rome in 410, and plundered their way to Spain, which they ruled until the arrival of the Moors in

All of this helped to convince Montezuma that Cortes was the incarnation of Quetzalcoatl, the banished god whose vengeful return had long been prophesied. Montezuma was terrified of Quetzalcoatl...Montezuma could not fight a god, and so his only choice was to welcome the intruder with wary courtesy.

Bison were plentiful; horses, by extending a hunter's range, made them even more so. Plains Indians were flourishing.
In fact, by the mid-nineteenth century, Plains Indians were taller than any documented population in the entire world...

It simply could not be that Hillary Clinton was correct when she asserted that a large group of Americans was endorsing a president because of bigotry. The implications-that systemic racism is still central to our politics....that the salt-of-the-earth Americans we lionize in our culture and politics are not so different from those same Americans who grin back at us in lynching photos..-are just too dark.

I will speak for myself and say that before Obama's campaign began, the American presidency seemed out of reach. It existed so high in the firmament....that I never gave the prospect of a black president much thought. By the summer of 2008, it was clear that I'd made an error.

During the years between 1910 and 1920, the black populations doubled in Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, and Cleveland... Fifty thousand southern blacks settled in Chicago alone between 1916 and 1919, and an additional 120,000 African Americans settled in the city during the 1920s.

A typical Irish town consists of several buildings, one of which is always a bar, called a "pub." Next to this there will typically be another pub, which is adjacent to several more pubs...

I watched the Big People. What is it like to move about the world, to travel, free of the fears of the tiny: the fear of being crushed by all the big things Big People make and use?
---"They Tell Me You Are Big" by Todd McEwen

....Asoka, in the words of one scholar, "was attempting to reform the narrow attitude of religious teaching to protect the weak against the strong, and to promote throughout the empire a consciousness of social behavior so broad in its scope that no cultural group could object to it."

In the middle of the night I ask myself:
what will happen to Chile,
what will become of my poor dark homeland?
----------------- Pablo Neruda
"Insomnia"

When a reporter from "The Detroit News" showed up at Nazi Party headquarters in December 1931 to interview Hitler...., she was surprised to find, hanging on the wall behind Hitler's desk, a large, framed portrait of America's most famous antisemite. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration," Hitler explained...
The reporter asked Hitler...why he was antisemitic.
"Somebody has to be blamed for our troubles,"..

"...I am always wary of revenge as a motivation for men and women to alert us to possible heresies. I fear some in the past have been burned for the wrong reasons... But as the Dominican Order has declared, it is better to burn one hundred innocents than leave one heretic left standing to corrupt God's faithful."

No guard spared a second glance for the skinny, bearded, dirty old beggar; there were a thousand in Camorr just like him, a thousand interchangeable losers,, hopeless and penniless...

Yet so far as anyone knew, the Gentlemen Bastards were an unassuming gang of ordinary sneak thieves; competent and discreet enough, steady earners, but hardly shooting stars..

After his departure from Paris on 7 October (1870), Gambetta had had an eventful flight. The balloon sailed over the Prussian lines at less than 2,000 feet, its occupants watching nervously while enemy riflemen below took pot shots at them.

Omisha is panting, her breath heavy and hot on my face. This is enough...Then she bares her teeth.

In the Western world, with its affluence, a great fear, a strong feeling of emptiness and pointlessness, often hides beneath the beautiful surface of the "good life," because the people take the material world too seriously. Those who succumb to the illusion that they can buy the meaning of life grow unhappy.

At Chengtu, ...the ( Chinese) government announced a dramatic decision: A new capital would be established at Taipei on the island of Taiwan, a former Japanese colony known to Westerners as Formosa, 100 miles from the mainland.

Brigadier General James Gavin, the thirty-seven-year-old assistant commander of the 82nd "All American" Airborne Division, had been handed a tough nut to crack--forcing a crossing over the Merderet River eight miles west of Utah Beach in Normandy. Gavin's men were to spearhead the full-scale attack by Major General J. Lawton Collins' U.S. VII Corps westward across the Cotentin Peninsula. The VII Corps was to rea

The bees did speak to him, after a fashion. The featureless drone, the sonic blank that others heard was to him a shifting narrative, rich, inflected, variable, and distinct...and he moved along the sound, tending to his hives...stooped and marveling.

The wooden doors creaked open and a middle-aged man in jeans introduced himself as the curator. He was pale-skinned, with an owlish face adorned by thick-rimmed glasses. His hair was tousled, his eyes tired, probably the effects of being woken from a sound sleep.

The Rough Riders' surgeons initially said it was okay to eat the mangoes but then changed their minds, believing that the plentiful fruit might serve as a carrier for yellow fever ( the discovery that mosquitos transmitted the yellow fever would not occur for another two years). By then, many troopers had already become addicted... and were willing to risk it.

Edith (Wilson) responded to World War I with a patriot's heart. She clamped down on the family finances, oversaw a strict cutback in White House expenditures, and even bought sheep for the mansion's lawn whose wool was auctioned on behalf of the Red Cross. She even made sure her husband...got enough rest and relaxation ( a billiard table was installed for his diversion).

Remaining a cautious distance from his prey, Launders had given the order to fire in a level tone. That was something his men would always remember about him: Launders never shouted his commands, but spoke them calmly, without raising his voice.
As the warhead blasted a hole in the ship..., the German guard boats had raced off in the direction of the British sub to retaliate.