STORY GIST 247

  40 year old Martha Place (nee Garretson) became the first woman to die in the electric chair when she was executed at 11.00 a.m. on Monday March 20th, 1899 at New York's Sing Sing prison for the murder of her 17 year old stepdaughter, Ida, on February 7th of the previous year.   An account of the execution in the National Police Gazette said she was guided into the death chamber by Warden Sage who had escorted her from her cell.  She was clutching a Bible in one hand.  A female day warder and a lady doctor followed her into the room and witnessed the execution.  The scene on the execution room was described thus :"Her eyes were closed, she was dressed in a black gown with a few fancy frills at the bosom. She wore russet slippers." spot had been clipped near the crown of her head to make room for the electrode. Another electrode was fastened to her leg. At 11.01 a.m. the executioner, Edwin Davis, threw the switch that sent a current of 1,760 volts went thr...

 In WWIl the Russians trained dogs to run under German tanks with bombs on their backs. However, the tanks the dogs were trained on were Russian and used different fuel, so the dogs ended up running under their own tanks and blowing them up. While bullets rang out and shrapnel flew on the battlefields of World War II, a new and ethically suspect tactic was deployed by the Russian Army in an attempt to hold the advancing Germans in check.  Dogs strapped with explosives were sent out to disable and destroy enemy tanks – and later themselves in the process. The German Panzers were quick and powerful vehicles of war, and dynamic weapons were needed to stop them – so how did they fare against these canine kamikazes? Also known as dog mines or dog bombs, anti-tank dogs were a new take on age-old thinking. Dogs have been employed in warfare since ancient times, and the Soviet Union had endorsed their use in the military for a range of less destructive tasks since 1924.  It was n...

 The hoods they are wearing are gas masks; the First World War was the first war in which manufactured poison gas was used as a weapon on a large scale.  This series of several hundred photographs recording the contribution of Indian soldiers to the Allied war effort was produced in 1915 by the Canadian-born photographer Charles Hilton DeWitt Girdwood (1878-1964). As a professional photographer Girdwood had an early connection with India, photographing the Delhi Durbar of 1903, the royal tour of 1905-06 and the Delhi Durbar of 1911. In 1908 he set up a photo agency called Realistic Travels, specialising in stereoscopic photographym With the outbreak of war in 1914, Girdwood returned from India and in April 1915 was given permission by the India Office to photograph the work of the Indian military hospitals in Bournemouth and Brighton. From July to September 1915 he worked in France as an official photographer to record Indian and later British troops in the field. In the later...

 Early on the morning of Jan. 31, 1968, as Vietnamese celebrated the Lunar New Year, or Tet as it is known locally, Communist forces launched a wave of coordinated surprise attacks across South Vietnam. The campaign — one of the largest of the Vietnam War — led to intense fighting and heavy casualties in cities and towns across the South. While battles raged for more than a month in some places like the city of Hue, the Tet Offensive was from a strictly military standpoint a defeat for the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces. Yet the campaign had a profound impact on the U.S. war effort, stunning leaders in Washington and leaving Americans questioning their country’s involvement in the overseas campaign. Fifty years after their original publication, The Associated Press is making available four stories from Jan. 31, Feb. 2 and Feb. 21, 1968, written by AP journalists Peter Arnett, Edwin Q. White and John Lengel documenting the offensive. The package includes a Pulitzer Prize-winn...

 German soldiers launching an attack on 'Dead Man's Hill' during the Battle of Verdun, March 15-16, 1916. The following is excerpts of Danish-German Unteroffizier Friedrich Karl Dambeck's account of an attack on the Côte 304 at Verdun on June 29, 1916 - today 107 years ago. Following the long and thorough preparation, on June 29 we were again to attempt taking the corpse-covered hill with a storm. Already on June 27 did Hauptmann Borchmann step forward to organise his storm units. Four units of 12 men each were necessary. The majority of these volunteered, the rest were drafted among the most experienced. Everyone stood in their right place at the established timestamp. At 5:15 the last heavy German shells exploded on the enemy's position, and worse than ever before it rained with splinters and rocks by our ears, all due to our heavy artillery. Suddenly the shells were subdued; the artillery fire had moved further back. We almost held our breaths completely, our hea...

  A mysterious history of how Hundreds of people died from botched treatments and infections in Victorian London,  Just like today, tooth decay was an unpleasant part of life, These amateur ‘surgeons’ would use pliers or forceps to extract the rotten tooth - without any anaesthetic to ease the agonising pain. Open wide! Back-street horror of Victorian dentistry exposed in grim photos from a time when a toothache would mean a painful trip to the barber.  In 19th and early 20th Century dentistry was done by barbers and blacksmiths. Tooth decay was common but the 'surgeons' would yank teeth out with forceps. Hundreds of people died from botched treatments and infections in Victorian London. Many people still find a trip to the dentists a daunting prospect now but these horrific Victorian photos reveal a time when getting your teeth fixed was a real life-or-death procedure. Just like today, tooth decay was an unpleasant part of life, but for the most of 1800s and early 1900s,...

  German woman named Shani Louk who was said to have been killed, stripped naked, and paraded by Hamas militants is alive, according to reports. She was reportedly found alive in a hospital. Her mother Ricarda has also released a video message asking the German government to act quickly to get her daughter out of the war-torn region. We now have information that Shani is alive but has a serious head injury and is in critical condition. Every minute is critical. And we ask...no, we demand the German government to act quickly," Ricarda can be heard saying in the video. One should not argue about the question of jurisdiction. One must act quickly to get Shani out of the Gaza Strip," the woman urges the German authorities. "This is really my desperate call to the entire country of Germany to help me get my Shani back home healthy," she adds. Days ago, a video clip of the woman's body being paraded naked by Hamas militants had surfaced online. It was believed that th...

 Every parent’s worst nightmare is seeing anything happen to their child, but that fear becomes amplified after you take your child to the doctor and she still doesn’t feel better. As katarina getzevich drove her daughter, a curisa to the hospital. There were countless thoughts running through her mind. She kept asking herself: why is my daughter having green and red mucus? Why is this terrible hovering around her or what? If this is a symptom of a terminal disease? You would think because she was a few minutes away from where she would get answers to these questions. She would be able to stop thinking about them, but she couldn’t those three questions have been churning in her mind since last night, when she noticed the horrendous pus fall out of her daughter’s nose. Still, the most important question on her mind is what would happen to my baby. So, as katarina got to the hospital she said to her daughter, it’s going to be okay, baby. The doctors would figure out what’s wrong and ...

  Poltergeist's ending sees the Freelings encounter multiple skeletons arising out of the ground, skeletons that once in fact belonged to real people. Poltergeist's ending sees the Freelings encounter multiple skeletons arising out of the ground, skeletons that once in fact belonged to real people. When it comes to ghost movies, few command as much respect as 1982's Poltergeist. While there's been a debate ever since its release about who really directed Poltergeist - some involved say credited director Tobe Hooper, other insist it was producer Steven Spielberg - the final product remains great, regardless of who was steering the ship. Set in the quiet California suburb of Cuesta Verde, Poltergeist looks at what happens when the life of a seemingly quite normal family suddenly gets turned upside down by supernatural events. The Freelings find themselves menaced by the spirits of the dead, particularly one dubbed "The Beast," who seek to use their young daughte...

  Giant lump left desperate mom fearing the worst and thinking her baby had a second head, ‘then doctors made a troubling discovery’! Becoming a parent is the most wonderful experience, and everyone wants to be blessed with a healthy baby, regardless of whether it is a boy or a girl. But, like having a baby girl is an amazing experience, several reasons why having a baby boy is also the most joyful experience. Since boys bond differently to their parents than girls, certain experiences will be exclusive to you if you are the parents of a baby boy. The then-20-year-old mom, Ellie, was stunned when she saw a large lump coming from son Harry’s shoulder, initially fearing her baby had a second head. Revealing her initial shock, she said: ‘When I opened my eyes as they handed me to him I was so shocked, I thought he’d been born with two heads. ‘I had no idea what it was – whether it was cancer or a tumour or something he’d have forever, it was really scary.’

 The Liberation Of Bergen-Belsen. British forces liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945. Thousands of bodies lay unburied around the camp and some 60,000 starving and mortally ill people were packed together without food, water or basic sanitation. Many were suffering from typhus, dysentery and starvation. Bergen-Belsen was first established in 1940 as a prisoner of war camp. From 1943, Jewish civilians with foreign passports were held as ‘leverage’ in possible exchanges for Germans interned in Allied countries or for money. It later became a concentration camp and was used as a collection centre for survivors of the death marches. The camp became exceptionally overcrowded and, as a result of the Germans’ neglect, conditions were allowed to deteriorate further in the last months of the war, causing many more deaths. The British Army immediately began to organise the relief effort. Their first priorities were to bury the dead, contain the spread of disease, restore the water suppl...

 First organized in 1916 as the 15th New York National Guard Infantry Regiment and manned by black enlisted soldiers with both black and white officers, the U.S. Army’s 369th Infantry Regiment, popularly known as the “Harlem Hellfighters,” was the best known African American unit of World War I.  Federalized in 1917, it prepared for service in Europe and arrived in Brest, France in December.  The next month, the regiment became part of the 93rd Division (Provisional) and continued its training, now under French instructors.In March, the regiment finally received its Federal designation and was reorganized and reequipped according to the French model. That summer, the 369th was integrated into the French 161st Division and began combat operations. Dubbing themselves “Men of Bronze,” the soldiers of the 369th were lucky in many ways compared to other African American military units in France in 1918. They enjoyed a continuity of leadership, commanded throughout the war by o...

  The group were approached by a smartly dressed man in a black coat who offered Minnie and their friend money to leave and go get sweets, which they did. The man then offered Fanny a half-penny if she would accompany him to ‘The Hollow’, she refused and he picked her up and took her anyway. Several hours later Minnie returned home without Fanny and told their mother about the meeting with the man in the black coat. Worried Mrs Adams, went to look for Fanny with the help of a neighbor, Mrs Gardiner. Whilst searching they saw a man in a black coat walking back to the village from the direction of The Hollow...   Mrs Gardiner accosted him and demanded to know what he had done with Fanny, the man shrugged off her claims “Nothing, I gave the girls money, but only to buy sweets which I often do to children.” The two women remained unconvinced, but then the man told them that he was the clerk to a local solicitor, William Clement, deciding him to be respectable the women let hi...

  In February 1775, a Danish woman killed her four month old baby When Authorities found her, she told them she would happily die for her crime. But why?  In February 1775, a Danish woman killed her four month old baby. When Authorities found her, she told them she would happily die for her crime. But why? Because at the time, a murder was more forgivable than suicide. A woman slit the throat of her own baby. The crimes were part of a wave of suicide-murders in the 17th and 18th centuries - a wave that swept through much of Europe but was especially common in Denmark. Insane though it may sound, people used to commit murder just so they could get executed. They even researched what crimes incurred the death penalty to guarantee they would die. During that time in history, suicide was not only a crime - it also meant your soul would be condemned to Hell for eternity. Unlike people who committed public suicide, suicide-murderers were terrified of killing themselves - and so they...

  The lost girl, 1874Blanche Monnier was a Parisian socialite who was known for her beauty. In France, she is referred to as "La Séquestrée de Poitiers" which means "The Confined Woman of Poitiers".  The reason as to why she got this title is tragic, and it all began with a love story that never had a happy ending. Monnier was from a wealthy and respected family from Poitiers.  When she was 25, she fell in deeply in love with a "penniless lawyer".This upset her mother, Louise Monnier, who wanted Blanche to marry a man of wealth and notoriety. However, Blanche refused to give up on her lover, so her mother trapped her in a room upstairs in their mansion and padlocked her to a bed. Blanche would remain on this bed for the next 26 years. During her time in this room, Louise and Blache's brother, Marcel, would pretend that she had ran off and disappeared. The family had a good reputation, as they donated to charities, and were considered to be intelligent ...

  British 57th Division patrolling the ruins of Cambrai following the Second Battle of Cambrai, October 9, 1918. Today 105 years ago, on October 8, 1918, the Second Battle of Cambrai was launched by British and Commonwealth forces, as part of the Hundred Days Offensive. In the Battle of the Canal du Nord in late September 1918, the Canadians had breached the German defenses in front of the city of Cambrai. The objective of this attack was now the capture of Cambrai, an important German railway and supply hub. It was hoped the capture of Cambrai along with the other Allied offensives along the Western Front would lead to complete victory. For the attack, the British had assembled 21 Divisions as well as 3 Canadian Divisions and the New Zealand Division, totalling some 730,000 troops, who were up against just 180,000 German troops defending Cambrai. The British would attack along a 20-mile front between Cambrai and Saint-Quentin, with the Canadians being given the task of taking Camb...

  The Ovitz family were a family of Romanian Jewish actors/traveling musicians who survived imprisonment at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Most of them were dwarfs. They were the largest family of dwarfs ever recorded and were the largest family (twelve family members from a 15-month-old baby to a 58-year-old woman) to enter Auschwitz and to survive intact. The Ovitz family, from the village of Rozavlea in Transylvania, was the largest recorded family of dwarves: a dwarf father who sired 10 children, seven of them dwarves. Perla, born in 1921, was the youngest. In that remote part of Romania in the early 20th century, it was difficult for anyone to eke a living from the land and livestock, and impossible for someone standing less than 3ft tall Throughout history, dwarves had been entertainers, often part of a circus or vaudeville show. But the Ovitzs wanted the stage all to themselves. They appropriately named their musical ensemble the Lilliput Troupe, and f...

  This is the moment a man was buried alive for three minutes under a pile of gravel before finally being dug out by his fellow workers. The worker, from Nairobi, Kenya, was covered when a truck driver tipped the gravel at a construction site unaware he was standing directly behind it. One man grabbed his legs - which were sticking out the gravel mound - while others used shovels to get to him. Video footage shows the man unconscious after being pulled from the gravel, but came round after first aid treatment and CPR. Geography teacher Dicken Muchena, 27, who filmed the footage, said: 'This team was transporting the gravel to a construction site when the driver of the tipper lowered the material without knowing that one of them was behind it. The victim was buried from the head and for more than three minutes all those around struggled to remove him from the material. 'I was shocked too, but decided to take the video amidst the agony. After a while he was removed and we conduct...

  Chinese archaeologists are perplexed by a 300-year-old burial site where two individuals were reduced to skeletons and one was completely preserved. Experts believe that when one of the coffins was opened, the man's face was perfectly preserved. But after a few hours, the face started to become black, and the body started to smell bad. The corpse's skin likewise turned black; it has since been transported to the nearby university for study. It is believed that the body dates from the Qing Dynasty. On October 10, 2013, it was discovered on a construction site in Xiangcheng, Henan Province, central China, in a two-meter-deep hole in the ground. According to MailOnline, Dr. Lukas Nickel, a specialist in Chinese art and archaeology at SOAS, University of London, preservations like these were unintentional. Unlike ancient Egypt, for example, the Chinese did not treat the body in any way to preserve it. However, they made an effort to safeguard the body by placing it in substantial...

  14 July 2011 : A Japanese company said it has ended contracts with the Iranian government following a report that its cranes have been used for public executions. Just days after United Against Nuclear Iran President Mark Wallace penned a July 6 opinion article in the Los Angeles Times stating that the Japanese crane company Tadano was one of several selling cranes to Iran, the company announced Tuesday it would cease making further Iranian deals. Crane-hanging has become a common practice in Iran. Tadano’s cranes, as well as those produced by other international manufacturers, have been used to make a dramatic public scene of executions.  In 2004, Iran garnered international attention for hanging a 16-year-old girl from a crane in public view for having promiscuous sex, a violation of Sharia law. While UANI communications director Nathan Carleton believes companies send their products to Iran without knowing the troubling consequences, he said the government has a dark hist...

The Ondo State Police Command on Wednesday said an investigation had begun into the death of a seven-year-old girl, whose corpse was recovered from a well in the Shasha area of Akure, the state capital.  It was gathered that the girl, whose loved ones didn’t want her name disclosed, was earlier said to be missing before her body was discovered in the well on Monday, days after she was not seen around.  A friend of the mother of the deceased, Adunni Azeez, told our correspondent that a neighbour was suspected to have been involved in the unfortunate incident. “The mother’s neighbour has been having grudges with the family.  From what we learned, she kidnapped the girl, and her body was later found in the well at Shasha, Akure, along Ondo Road,” Adunni said, upon returning from a condolence visit to the deceased’s family, on Wednesday.  Claims of how the seven-year-old died could not be independently verified as of press time, but Adunni added, “Her body was still fres...

  French woman accused of sleeping with Germans during the occupation has her head shaved by vindictive neighbors in village near Marseilles.  Antony Beevor wrote: "... In Paris, there were cases of prostitutes kicked to death for having accepted German soldiers as clients.  A large number of the victims were prostitutes who had simply plied their trade with Germans as well as Frenchmen, although in some areas it was accepted that their conduct was professional rather than political, others were silly teenagers who had associated with German soldiers out of bravado or boredom.  In a number of cases, female schoolteachers who, living alone, had German soldiers billeted on them, were falsely denounced for having been a "mattress for the boches.   Women accused of having had an abortion were also assumed to have consorted with Germans. Many victims were young mothers, whose husbands were in German prisoner-of-war camps.  During the war, they often had no ...

  In a chilling and heart-wrenching incident that left Ohio law enforcement officers deeply shaken, the squalor of a motel room became the backdrop for an unimaginable horror.  A strange call from a distressed woman led to a nightmarish discovery, one that would haunt the officers for a long time to come. What they encountered inside that sordid room defied all sense of humanity and left them in tears. The ordeal began when a 911 dispatcher received a call from a woman seeking help at the Parkway Inn in Middletown, Ohio. The caller, identified as 26-year-old Theresa Hawkins-Stephens, claimed to be having an issue with one of her young sons. Little did the authorities know what awaited them when they responded to this seemingly routine call, as they were about to witness a scene of unspeakable cruelty that had transpired over the last 22 hours. Hawkins-Stephens had been staying in the squalid motel room with her two sons, aged 5 and 6, along with her 29-year-old girlfriend, Rac...

  Today is the saddest day of my life. As a doctor, I have treated so many pregnant women in labor and whenever I am in the delivery room, I always pray to God to bless all the babies' mothers. The pain women go through in the delivery room is indescribable and that doesn't include the 9 months they spent carrying the baby. They go through a lot just to give birth to a new life. Today I cried bitterly because I lost a woman. We don't pray for things like this to happen, but sometimes God may have other plans. Why is this woman's case so painful? She had been sterile for 14 years! We have tried IVF (in-vitro fertilization) and so many methods known to mankind; the woman has been through a lot. Finally, she had just gotten pregnant despite having an ovarian cyst and a huge load of fibroids. Yes, she got pregnant. Her fibroid started to melt away and everything was fine, After 9 months, it was time! Her husband rushed her to the hospital and quickly I left everything I was...

 Though Russia is closing in on that. North Korea has this insane museum called north Korea Museum of American Atrocities. This isn’t to say that my country hasn’t done terrible things with its foreign policy. Every American knows this.  But the museum is such a ridiculous display of fictional history, making it seem like American soldiers are laughing and enjoying torturing people. Every North Korean depicted is this light skinned, Anglo-Saxon model who is defiant and unafraid of some horrible thing about to happen to them. The very existence of countries like North Korea are a warning to people around the world of what happens when too much power becomes concentrated in the power of one person. Democracy might be messy and full of infighting and its own inefficiencies, but having access to dissenting voices, freedom of speech, and fair elections is what keeps politicians in check. As soon as your government stops your press from criticizing the people in charge, you should b...

 A final cigarette... then the hangman's noose: Three men put to death in Kuwaiti car park in country's first execution in six years Blindfolded, his hands bound, a condemned prisoner puffs desperately on a final cigarette. Just a few minutes later he and two others are led up a short flight of stairs, nooses are placed around their necks before a trapdoor opens beneath their feet. This is justice Kuwait-style. The Gulf-Arab state hanged three convicted murderers today, the first executions to take place there since 2007, state news agency KUNA reported. Kuwait, which has a population of around three and a half million people, operates a judicial system which is a mixture of Islamic Sharia law, English common law, and the Ottoman civil code. The state carried out 72 executions (69 men and three women) between April 1964 and May 2007. Crimes that carry the death sentence include drug trafficking, murder and treason. Sentences are not carried out publically however members of the...

  This Mother’s Baby Bump Doesn’t Stop Growing, Then Her Doctor Spots Something Unusual in an Ultrasound.” Every pregnancy is different. Some are easier, and others can be harder on both the mother-to-be and her unborn child. And though this was only her first pregnancy, Shanice had grown as big as a house during her second trimester, and she just knew something wasn’t quite right. She had backaches constantly, and she was always starving. So Shanice’s doctors sent her for an ultrasound. The nurse squeezed the jelly onto her stomach and began the scan. She explained to the young woman that her symptoms were absolutely normal for a first pregnancy. But as Shanice laid there, her eyes moving between her stomach and the monitor, she quietly asked, “Is everything okay?” Instead of answering, the nurse called the doctor. Shanice had always known she would have a family of her own one day. Her parents had been committed to one another since they were 16, and her older sister married her ...