The EU migrant crisis is getting worse. It is out of control. The Schengen Zone is collapsing. Germany has now reinstated its borders with Austria. Slovakia and Austria have also reintroduced border controls with Hungary.
Why? Because in the last few months tens of thousands of migrants from Syria, Afghanistan and parts of Africa have been crossing Europe to get to Germany.
The Hungarians have now built a 180km long 4m (13ft) high fence along their southern border with Serbia to stop them. At midnight, on the orders of its prime minister Victor Orbán, Hungary sealed its southern border with Serbia.
Today, let’s talk about Nazi gold. It’s a hot topic to discuss, especially since the alleged discovery in the Polish mountains of a long lost Nazi ghost train. Legend says it is full of gold and other such treasures. If the speculation is correct it would be a truly fascinating discovery. Certainly, it would make a good Indiana Jones style movie, for sure!
Seventy years since the end of the Third Reich two treasure hunters have now reported their discovery. The train is said to be hidden in a long-forgotten sealed off tunnel under the mountains near the town of Walbrzych in southern west Poland near the Czech border.
A majestic sea of red poppies now surrounds the Tower of London in London. The display called ‘Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red’ is in the Tower of London moat. It marks the First World War centenary.
Thousands and thousands of people have visited the display, by artist Paul Cummins, with huge queues forming; such has been the popularity of it. All four sides of the dry moat surrounding the fortress are now blanketed in a sea of scarlet red.
London / Tower of London / Poppy Display
Today, let’s talk about some words that are used in everyday English that originate from the trenches of World War One. Really?
You’d be surprised just how many words there are, for example, bloke, binge drink, wash out, and snapshot. Research has been done by military historian Peter Doyle and Julian Walker, an etymologist, who have analysed thousands of documents from the period to trace how language changed during the period.
Category: Language / English Language / Trench Talk
Recently a fascinating story caught my eye. It’s about 20 Spitfires buried in Burma at the end of World War II that have suddenly been discovered! It’s like something out of a boy’s adventure book or an Indiana Jones story. A British farmer’s quest to find a squadron of legendary fighter planes lost in Burma during the war has finally paid off.
Lincolnshire farmer David Cundall, 62, has spent about US$207,000, travelled to Burma a dozen times and negotiated with the cagey Burmese government. All in the hope of finding a stash of iconic British Spitfires that are buried somewhere in the South Eastern Asian country.
Burying planes might sound a bit odd but was commonplace at the end of WWII as the conflict wound down and new jet aircraft replaced propeller-driven fighters. Many aircraft were scrapped, buried or sunk by Allies Forces in order to prevent them from falling into enemy hands.
Category: Discoveries / Aviation / Spitfires
Why do we dream of a white Christmas? Why do we get Christmas cards with snow on them? The culprit is the writer Charles Dickens. His childhood coincided with a decade of freakishly cold winters. Thus in his writings he describes persistently a Britain smothered in snow on Christmas Day, his inspiration coming from his childhood.
Six of Dickens’s first nine Christmases were white. One of these fell in the winter of 1813-14, when Britain’s last Frost Fair was held on a frozen River Thames in London and Dickens was nearly two years old. The ice around Blackfriars Bridge was thick enough to bear the weight of an elephant. So when in 1843, he came to write about the Ghost of Christmas Past, he did so with the spirit of those colder Christmases, with “quick wheels dashing the hoar frost and snow from the darker leaves of the evergreen like spray”. The story is now credited with establishing the Victorian genre of the Christmas story and spurring a revival of the celebration of Christmas in early Victorian England.
Category: Christmas / Charles Dickens / Snow
For nearly half a century Bletchley Park, a Victorian manor house near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, lay neglected and unloved; its dilapidated buildings falling into disrepair. By the 90s, its boarded-up huts at its rear were due to be torn down. Yet for more than 50 years the house was shrouded under a veil of secrecy. Only during the last 20 years was its secret finally revealed. It was the place where the codes of the German Enigma machine were broken by a special-purpose codebreaking machine called Colossus.
The secret work at Bletchley Park had, it is believed, shortened the war by up to two years. However, the secrecy came at a cost. Britain lost out to the US in the development of computer technology. So what is the link between Bletchley Park and Google? Simple – there is a desire by some individuals at Google to nurture the past. In fact, Google is helping to spearhead a campaign to save Bletchley Park by restoring it to its former glory. Google has provided the money for the purchase of key papers and is backing the current appeal to restore the derelict block at Bletchley Park.
Category: History / Bletchley Park / Google
A new sci-fi film* about the Nazis has reignited a debate in Germany about Hitler’s development of flying saucers. The Finnish sci-fi comedy ‘Iron Sky*’ centres on real life officer Hans Kammler, who was said to have made a significant breakthrough in anti-gravity experiments towards the end of World War Two.
The film relates how, from a secret base built up in Antarctica, the first Nazi spaceships were launched in late 1945 to found the military base Schwartz Sonne – Black Sun – on the dark side of the moon. This base was to be used to build a powerful invasion fleet and return to the earth once the timing was right, in this case 2018.
Category: Nazis / Flying Saucers / Sci-Fi Movie
Why do we dream of a white Christmas? Why do we get Christmas cards with snow on them? The culprit is the writer Charles Dickens. His childhood coincided with a decade of freakishly cold winters. Thus in his writings he describes persistently a Britain smothered in snow on Christmas Day, his inspiration coming from his childhood.
Six of Dickens’s first nine Christmases were white. One of these fell in the winter of 1813-14, when Britain’s last Frost Fair was held on a frozen River Thames in London and Dickens was nearly two years old. The ice around Blackfriars Bridge was thick enough to bear the weight of an elephant.
So when in 1843, he came to write about the Ghost of Christmas Past, he did so with the spirit of those colder Christmases, with “quick wheels dashing the hoar frost and snow from the darker leaves of the evergreen like spray”. The story is now credited with establishing the Victorian genre of the Christmas story and spurring a revival of the celebration of Christmas in early Victorian England.
Category: Christmas / Charles Dickens / Snow
A steam train carrying evacuees from the former Czechoslovakia who escaped the holocaust as children arrived at London's Liverpool Street station on Friday (4th September). They were met by the man who saved their lives. Sir Nicholas Winton, an indefatigable 100-year-old, greeted the passengers who had boarded the train in Prague to mark the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War.
Now walking with a stick, he shook hands with many of the evacuees as they stepped off the steam train. Twenty-two of the evacuees were part of the original 669 mostly Jewish children he helped to escape from the Nazis ahead of war being declared on 3rd September 1939. The others were the descendants of these children.
The event was organised by Czech Railways who hired the new British steam train Tornado to re-enact the journey. Before the steam train departed on Tuesday from Prague a statue of Sir Nicholas was unveiled at the station. The train then passed through Germany and Holland en-route for England. A band played as "The Winton Train", as it was dubbed, arrived at Liverpool Street. The event drew many people who wanted to meet the man dubbed the British Schindler...
