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Showing posts with the label Germany

Riddle of His Time the Mysterious Life and Tragic Death of Kaspar Hauser: Royal Heir or Suicidal Teenager?

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On May 26, 1828 a teenaged boy with a limping gait, wild eyes, torn clothes and long unkempt hair mysteriously appears wandering the streets of Nuremberg Germany. No one in the city has any idea who the boy is.  It is as if he has appeared by magic, fallen from the sky, and landed right in the middle of Bavaria’s second largest city. On being questioned the boy is only able to repeat, “Horse, horse,” over and over again. After searching the pockets of his clothes it is discovered that the boy is carrying two letters.  The first letter is addressed to a Bavarian cavalry officer named Captain von Wessering and is simply headed, “From the Bavarian border: 1828”. The letter is not signed.  It says only that the boy had been given over to the author’s custody in October of 1812 while still an infant.  The author claims that he has done his best to instruct him in reading, writing and the Christian religion but that he/she has never allowed the boy, “to take a sing...

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Who is the Real Snow White? The Historical Debate Behind the Deadly Origins of Disney's First Fairy Tale

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            The evil queen commands the huntsman, “Kill her and as proof that she is dead bring her lungs and liver back to me.” The huntsman doesn’t kill her.  Instead, he sets out into the forest and slaughters a wild boar.  He brings the liver and lungs of the boar back to the evil queen and his ruse works. Greedily, the evil queen devours the entrails that the huntsman brings to her in a frenzy of cannibalistic ecstasy. In a few years, a magic mirror tells the queen that she has been deceived by the huntsman, and she sets out once again to kill the young maiden.  This time she believes she has accomplished her goal after pretending to be a farmer’s wife and convincing the maiden to eat a poisoned apple. But the queen has been fooled yet again.  The girl did not die.  The poisoned apple has only caused her to lapse into a sort of coma after becoming lodged in her throat.  Her seven companions, all suffering fr...

Like War in Heaven: How the Zeppelin Terror Over London in 1915 Changed the World Forever (and created women's pajamas!)

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  “Nowadays there is no such animal as a noncombatant.  Modern warfare is total warfare.”  -German Zeppelin Corp Commander Peter Strasser (1915) Some claim that they can hear an eerie throbbing sound in the skies above London that night.  A few look up and can faintly make out a large cigar shaped shadow slowly drifting across the night sky high above the city.  The police have been forewarned.  Observers had spotted the massive airship floating over the coast of England only mere moments before.  The enormous hydrogen filled zeppelin, over 650 feet in length, is flying at approximately eighty miles per hour at an altitude of 16,000 feet.  An altitude too high for any anti-aircraft fire to reach. All that the police can do is to frantically pedal bicycles through the streets of London, blowing on whistles as they go, and shouting, “Take cover!  Take cover!” to passersby.  Some heed the warnings and huddle in basements.  Those ...