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Then-president Václav Havel (L) with American Secretary of Defense William Cohen (R) in 1997. (Defense.gov) On this day in 1989, Czech writer and activist Václav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia (now Czechia) in that country's first free, post-communist election. The Central European country had just recently removed itself from the USSR (Union of Soviet…
Canadian casualties are removed by stretcher bearers during the fighting in Ortona. (UrbanToronto.ca) On this day in 1943, the 1st Canadian Division captured the Italian town of Ortona from Axis forces. Aside from being a strategically significant sea port on the East coast of Italy, Ortona was one of the key German strongholds on the…
Propaganda, a tool that turned Soviet peasantry against kulaks during the 1930s. (Twitter) On this day in 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered the annihilation of the kulaks - a class of prosperous peasants in Eastern Europe - as a part of the USSR's first Five Year Plan. The "liquidation of the kulaks as a…
