Timeline: 1 May 1960: An American U-2 spy plane being flown by CIA pilot Captain Francis Gary Powers is shot down by a Soviet surface-to-air missile. It crashes near the Ural Mountains. 5 May 1960: A statement released by NASA indicates that a weather research plane has gone missing; the USSR admits shooting down a …
The Story Behind The U2 Spy Plane And All Its Consequences – May, 1, 1960 Read More »
During World War I prices in Germany had doubled, but the real trouble started afterwards. The new German Weimar government was bound by the Treaty of Versailles – designed to ensure that the grandees of the now defunct German Empire could never wage war on their neighbors again. The Treaty’s terms put the Weimar government …
Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic – 1922-1923 Read More »
The fiasco of the Afghan presidential election of 2009 is an object lesson in the consequences of blithely marching into alien territory and attempting to impose by force Western notions of liberal democracy on an ancient and complex kinship culture in which clan loyalties invariably take precedence over national identity. After the UN (United Nations) …
When British Prime Minister Tony Blair agreed to support America’s invasion of Iraq he was on shaky ground – under international law there was no casus belli. But in September 2002 the government published a dossier based on British intelligence reports. It claimed that Saddam Hussein was armed to the teeth with biological and chemical …
Guantanamo Bay on the southern tip of Cuba has been an American naval base ever since 1898, used from the 1970s as a detention camp for Cubans and Haitians caught attempting to slip into America by sea. After the invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, President Bush found a chilling new purpose for it: Guantanamo …
As the 1992 general election approached, Britain was sliding into recession. The electorate were more than ready for change after 13 years of Tory rule, but not entirely convinced by Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party. In the weeks leading up to the election the polls were neck and neck – it looked as though the result …