The Security Council met in a designated chamber in the United Nations Conference Building in New York City, U.S. on December 15, 1971, to discuss the war between India and Pakistan. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister, Zulfikar All Bhutto, his face streaked with tears, walked out of the Security Council after accusing it of “legalizing aggression.” Outside the chamber, he said: “I hate this…
Yeltsin, Putin and the Unholy Alliance with Oligarchy
Boris Yeltsin was re-elected on July 3, 1996. To secure his victory and ward off a Communist Party comeback, he formed an unholy alliance with the oligarchy, setting the stage for today’s regime in Russia. Boris Yeltsin (right in photo) was re-elected with 53.8 percent of the vote – 13 points ahead of his opponent, Gennady…
When the Soviet Union Paid Pepsi in Warships
The company had a long, strange relationship with the U.S.S.R. On April 9, 1990, American newspapers reported on an unusual deal. Pepsi had come to a three billion dollar agreement with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had long traded Stolichnaya vodka in return for Pepsi concentrate. But this time, Pepsi got 10 Soviet ships. This…
Jimmy Page on his career, Led Zeppelin and how he changed music
Watch this 50-minute interview with Jimmy Page where he goes into his early days, why he founded Led Zeppelin, how he came up with the band’s name and his plans for Led Zeppelin’s fiftieth anniversary. “Let’s be perfectly honest about this. When I formed Led Zeppelin, I formed it with the idea and ethos that…
When an eyewitness to President Lincoln’s assassination appeared on a 1956 television game show.
In 1956, on an episode of the then-popular game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” 96-year-old Samuel J. Seymour, whispered to the show’s host Garry Moore: “I saw John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln.” over ninety years earlier, at Washington D.C.’s Ford Theatre. At the time the show was filmed in 1956, he was the only…
Nixon’s 1969 Version of ‘Fire and Fury’
In the opening days of 2018, the book ‘Fire and Fury’ set the internet ablaze. Author Michael Wolff, whose journalistic methods have received criticism across the political spectrum, marketed his book as a tell-all about Trump’s campaign and administration. But long before Wolff, another writer caught the nation’s attention with his own salacious tell-all—this one about Richard…
I Went With Johnny Cash to Folsom Prison
The gates of Folsom State Prison closed behind Gene Beley. It was 1968, and it was the first time the 28-year-old had ever been to state prison. “When you walk through there and they shut that door,” he says, “you realize that many men who have that happen never see their freedom again. It’s pretty…
In His Own Words: Einstein’s equation that gave birth to the atom bomb
Albert Einstein is best known by the general public for his mass-energy equivalence formula E = mc2. Watch Einstein, in his own words, connect for the first time the mass of an object with its energy by using his famous equation. A new world of physics is born. He received the 1921 Nobel Prize in…
The Red Summer: The Chicago Race Riots of 1919.
The Red Summer refers to the summer and early autumn of 1919, which was marked by hundreds of deaths and higher casualties across the United States, as a result of race riots that occurred in more than three dozen cities and one rural county. In most instances, whites attacked African Americans. In some cases,…
Postwar Germany 28 Months After V-E Day
Investigation of German industrial production capabilities after the devastation of World War II. With striking images of destroyed German cities and factories. An amateur film made by George T. Fonda, assistant to the president, Weirton Steel Company.
Americans Played Football in the Nuked Remains of Nagasaki For the ‘Atom Bowl’ in 1946
Photo of the Atom Bowl on January 1, 1946 in Nagasaki Japan as found in the book Pictorial Arrowhead Occupation of Japan by Second Marine Division (Scan courtesy of the Tokyo Files Archives) The US and North Korea seem to be on the brink of starting a nuclear war almost every single day here in…
How Women Broke Into the Male-Dominated World of Cartoons and Illustrations
A new exhibition at the Library of Congress highlights female artists and their contributions to comic strips, magazine covers and political cartoons Dale Messick, creator of the comic strip “Brenda Starr,” looks up from some of her strips in her studio in her Chicago apartment in 1975. (AP) By Anna Diamond SMITHSONIAN.COM JANUARY 11, 2018 Early in…
