On this day in 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed by electrocution under the Espionage Act of 1917 for sharing U.S. atomic warfare secrets with the Soviet Union. Having been granted a brief reprieve by Justice William O. Douglas, the stay was lifted by the Supreme Court, with the execution scheduled for the customary […]
Category: Foreign Affairs
USS Liberty and the Six Day War
On this day in 1967, the largely unarmed American Navy technical research ship, USS Liberty, is robustly attacked by Israeli Air Force jet fighter aircraft and Israeli Navy motor torpedo boats during the Six-Day War. The combined air and sea attack killed 34 of her crew (naval officers, seamen, two marines, and one civilian), wounded […]
Madeleine Albright – a Force to be Reckoned With
On this day in 1937, the first woman US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, is born in Prague; her name at birth was Marie Jana Korbelová. The daughter of Czech diplomat Josef Korbel, Albright fled to England with her family after the Nazis occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939. Though Albright long believed they had fled for […]
Civil War in Lebanon
On this day in 1983, the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is almost completely destroyed by a car-bomb explosion that kills 63 people, including the suicide bomber and 17 Americans. The terrorist attack was carried out in protest of the U.S. military presence in Lebanon. In 1975, a bloody civil war had erupted in Lebanon, […]
The Greatest Man Of The 20th Century
French Scientists Rule Out Arafat Poisoning (VIDEO)
French scientists have confirmed high levels of polonium in Yasser Arafat’s body, but have dismissed the theory that the Palestinian leader was poisoned. The French judiciary does not want the findings from the secret French dossier to be published, but Al Jazeera has obtained access to its conclusions, which contradict those made by a Swiss […]