A Day In History

Sadly, not many people outside Southeast Asia remember the tragedy of the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia, but in the late 1970s and 1980s, when the evil nature of the regime in that country from 1975-79 was publicized in Europe and the United States, the absolutely horrific acts of the Khmer Rouge (“kah-mair ruuj”) regime became front page news, an Oscar-winning movie and a quite popular punk rock anthem, “Holiday in Cambodia,” by the Dead Kennedy's in 1980.

When a historian writes “The Church”, he or she only means one thing – the Catholic Church. For many hundreds of years, the Catholic Church was really the only Christian church in Europe. Or at least in western, central and northern Europe. In Russia and the Byzantine Empire, which included much of the Balkan peninsula, the Orthodox faith held sway. Both the pope in Rome and the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Constantinople worked tirelessly to make theirs the ONLY Christian church, but despite much bloodshed and treasure spent, neither one could gain the upper hand in the others' territories.

The Central Intelligence Agency has been a core part of the United States’ defense against foreign and domestic enemies for decades. However, it has attracted plenty of criticism for its methods and motives over the years. Declassified documents have only fuelled this criticism, revealing all manner of unethical or illegal conduct hidden in the CIA’s closet. Many of the declassified secrets are more absurd than creepy. Wacky plots and absurd technology like bird spy drones, catfish spy drones, dragonfly spy drones - a lot of animal spy drones, come to think of it - are among the stranger revelations from declassified archives. However, some of these documents reveal far more gruesome secrets. Plans for political assassinations, mind control, torture, and even inciting international wars reveal that the CIA has gotten up to far more than the public ever suspected.

Here's some irony: the Viking Age began circa 793 AD with the famous raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne on the northern English coast. The Vikings that attacked the monastery were probably Danes. And the ancestors of the people at Lindisfarne and many of the people of England were...Danes. Well, not "Dane Danes," but they were from Denmark and Germany near the modern German/Danish border.

The Aztec Empire is one of the most infamous empires in history. From their capital of Tenochtitlan, they ruled over much of Mexico in the 15th and early 16th centuries until their conquest by the Spanish conquistadores, led by Hernan Cortes, in 1521. Today, we explore some of the stranger aspects and events in Aztec history.

Today, the Philippine capital, Manila, is a sprawling city of about 2 million people. Known as "The Pearl of the Orient" for its beauty before WWII, Manila, a bustling city and the center of politics and business in the Philippines, has not captured its pre-war beauty since 1945. The reason is simple: Manila was destroyed at the end of WWII. Following their 1946 independence from the United States, Filipinos and their government relied on the US and its money to rebuild a war-torn economy. For the US, rebuilding quickly was one of the keys to getting the Philippines back on its feet and preventing a potential communist revolution in the country, which was a distinct possibility.

Few words in 20th century history have been as complicated as ‘Bolshevik.’ The Bolsheviks were a splinter group of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and became a formal party in 1912. They were avowed Marxists and revolutionaries who spearheaded the Russian Revolution in 1917, toppling the Tsar and giving rise to the Soviet Union. They would later rename themselves as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, although the Bolshevik nickname still stuck. For decades, the Bolsheviks ruled one of the most powerful countries on earth, endured a World War, and became locked in a decades-long ideological stand-off with the Capitalist world.

Few organizations have a reputation quite like that of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA’s mission is to protect the United States from enemies foreign and domestic, but over the years, questions have been raised over whether the CIA's actions live up to its noble goals. We recently shared a video looking at some of the darker secrets of the CIA. Today, we’ll be looking at even more stories that show the sinister and downright bizarre things the CIA has gotten up to over the years.

The Silent Holocaust, also known as the Guatemalan Genocide, was a brutal period in the history of Guatemala. This dark chapter in human history saw the extermination of an estimated 200,000 Indigenous people, mostly Mayan, by the Guatemalan government and military forces between 1960 and 1996. Despite the enormity of this tragedy, it remains relatively unknown to the wider world. In this video, we aim to shed light on this devastating event in history and its impact on the people of Guatemala. We will explore the reasons behind the genocide, the methods used by the government and military forces to execute their plan, and the aftermath of the violence.

Japan has a unique history. From the early 17th century until the mid-19th century, the island-nation was isolated from the world by order of the ruling Shoguns, the military-leaders who ruled in the name of the emperor. Foreigners were only allowed on one small island near Nagasaki, and no Japanese at all were allowed to leave – ever. This all changed in 1853-54, when American naval officer Matthew C. Perry forcibly opened Japan to international trade. What the naval officers and Marines in Perry's fleet saw when they came ashore in Japan shocked them – Japan had been suspended in time since the early 1600s. Its buildings, clothing, and especially weapons, were 200 years behind America and the Western world.

We all know that governments keep secrets from their citizens. In an ideal world, we like to think that all of these lies are necessary to protect national security or avoid a panic. In most democracies, we can hope that the government will eventually declassify these secrets. The US government has plenty of secrets of its own and, thankfully, it has a relatively good record of declassifying material when it no longer poses a risk to security. Buried in these declassified files, however, are gruesome, terrifying, and outright disturbing revelations of what the most powerful nation on earth has gotten up to over the years.

For almost 700 years between the 12th and 19th centuries, Japan was ruled by a Shogun. This was the age of samurai and the formation of the modern nation of Japan. This period also saw the emergence of new ideas about love-making and marriage. Today, we’ll be looking at love, marriage, divorce, and sexual culture in Shogun-era Japan. If you enjoy videos like this topic, please like and subscribe to the channel for more content like this.

Gaius Julius Caesar was born in Rome in 100 BC into the prestigious Gens Julia family. His childhood was spent in the shadow of Italy’s Social War and then a civil conflict between Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Caesar’s uncle, Gaius Marius, while the Senate floundered and struggled to respond to the crises facing the Republic. Sulla emerged victorious, forcing a young Caesar to ship out to the military early to avoid facing punishment for his uncle’s actions.

Of all the warlike peoples of history, few have earned such a brutal reputation as the Assyrians. Hailing from part of Mesopotamia, roughly in modern-day Iraq, the Assyrians forged a series of empires that were some of the great powers of the ancient world. The greatest of these empires was the Neo-Assyrian Empire which existed from the late 10th to late 7th centuries BC. In its day, it was the largest empire the world had yet seen, stretching from Egypt to Syria, from the Levant back into Mesopotamia. Today, we explore the brutal punishments inflicted on enemies, rebels, and criminals in order to build and sustain this mighty empire, and learn why the Assyrians have their fearsome reputation.

Britain’s MI6 may have become known worldwide through stories of spies embarking on exciting missions in exotic locations, but the reality isn’t so glamorous. Officially called the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 is the foreign arm of the British intelligence service and has been active all over the world since its foundation during the First World War. Today on A Day In History, we expose some of the most disturbing secrets from Britain’s legendary intelligence service.

What about nuclear radiation, one of the most dangerous things known to man? Well, some knew. They truly did. Many chose to downplay the threat, while others knew and tried to raise the alarm the best way they could. Of course, although sophisticated beyond belief, mankind's knowledge of radiation was primitive compared to today's understanding of it. The first “nuclear football” For those of you outside the USA, a “bowl” game usually refers to an American championship football game of some kind or another.

The ship’s namesake was a German-born Swiss and a nasty piece of work who led a small Nazi Party in Switzerland. He and others agitated pressed, threatened, spoke, and politicked for Hitler in the small mountain country, hoping to take over Switzerland from within. In 1936, Gustloff was shot and killed by David Frankfurter, a young Jewish man from Yugoslavia who had begun his college education in Germany in 1931. Frankfurter witnessed the rise of the Nazis to power and saw the hateful changes that had come over Germany in a short time. In 1934, Frankfurter moved to Switzerland to continue his education. In Switzerland, he worked to ensure that the Swiss, especially the Jews of Switzerland, knew what life under the Nazis was like. In 1936, seeing Nazis in the streets in small but growing numbers, Frankfurter went to Gustloff’s house and killed him with a gun he had bought shortly before.

In the years between the end of WWII in 1945 and the founding of the state of Israel in 1948, the men and women who would become the citizens of the first Jewish state in almost 2,000 years had already formed a small army equipped with an assortment of old British, American, and other assorted weapons, including a small number of tanks, trucks and armored personnel carriers. The Israelis had also formed the core of an air force that would eventually become one of the most effective forces on Earth.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States, the United Kingdom and Holland suffered setback after setback at the hands of the Japanese throughout the western Pacific, or the eastern Pacific for those of you in Asia. The British possessions of Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong were overrun, as were parts of New Guinea, the giant island north of Australia. The United States lost Guam, Wake Island, and worst of all from the point of view of both prestige and power, the Philippines. The Free Dutch, whose nation had been conquered by Hitler in 1940, maintained control of their Indonesian colony, including the territory of Brunei – two of the richest territories in the Pacific, mainly in oil and rubber after Hitler's takeover of Holland, but lost it to his allies the Japanese in beginning in January, 1942. At the time, Indonesia was known as “The Dutch East Indies.”

Mussolini was born on the 29th July 1893. His father was an avowed socialist while his mother was a devout Catholic. This conflicting balance of economic socialism but social traditionalism might be key to explaining the radical path the young boy would take later in his life.

Upon becoming Pope, Sixtus abused his new position to shower gifts on his family. Within a year, Sixtus’ sisters had elaborate houses in Rome and every luxury they desired. His nephews Pietro and Guiliano were immediately made cardinals despite being completely unqualified for the position. Pietro was made a bishop and then the Archbishop of Florence in 1473. Pietro was close to his uncle and effectively ran Sixtus’ foreign policy until his sudden death later in 1473. Meanwhile, Giovanni was made the Lord of Papal Lands in Senigallia and Mondavio and given a favorable marriage to a daughter of the powerful Montefeltro family. But perhaps the most richly rewarded nephew was Girolamo Riario who was made Captain-General of the Church, effectively in full control of the papacy’s military resources, and was made the Lord of Imola - a recently acquired city that would cause a cascade of problems in time.

In ancient Egypt, going back as far at least of the famous King Tutankhamen, who reigned from 1332BCE to 1323BCE, and was part of the long-lasting 18th Dynasty (c.1550BCE-1292BCE) in the New Kingdom of Egypt Period (1550BCE-1069BCE). We'll tell you more about Tutankhamen, or “King Tut” in a bit, but in addition to having one of the most glorious and preserved tombs of the ancient world, Tut and his relatives had their DNA tested. No, the Egyptians didn't possess some kind of advanced alien technology 3,000 years ago – like some people do believe – their DNA was removed in 2010 by a team of German and Egyptian researchers.

The 20th century had no shortage of terrible events that cast a shadow over people today. The deaths of over a million Armenians is one such tragedy. Few tragedies have faced such bitter political discussion after the fact as the Armenian Incident. , others deny it ever happened, insist it was an accident, or that it was a justified response to a political threat. In this video, we look at the unspeakable things that happened in the Armenian Incident and how its complicated legacy is still hotly debated today.

The history of Communist China is shrouded by censorship and propaganda from the Chinese Communist Party, but even the famously obtuse CCP can’t hide the legacy of one of its darkest episodes. The Cultural Revolution which gripped China from 1966 to 1976 remains a topic of great discomfort and regret for many in China due to the incredible amount of disorder, violence, and death that it caused. Today on A Day In History, we explore what happened during the Cultural Revolution and why it is so infamous to this day.

From 1965 to 1973, the United States waged a grueling war against the Communist forces of North Vietnam. The conflict was a brutal guerrilla war where young American soldiers were sent far from home to fight an enemy that fought unlike anything the US military had seen before. The Vietnam War remains controversial to this day. Some argue it was a justified defense of South Vietnam against Northern Communist aggression, while others argue it was an unjustified war of US imperialism driven by Cold War anti-communist hysteria. What all can agree upon is that the war resulted in the deaths of millions of people, a large portion of them civilians killed by the United States.

The Lebensborn began in 1935, the same year that the Nazis passed their anti-Semitic “Nuremberg Laws.” By 1935, Hitler and Himmler felt strong enough in their position in Germany to begin what would eventually end in the murder of six million Jews and five million other people in the Holocaust. Historians still debate whether or not Hitler and Himmler actually began this process with the idea of killing millions of people, but we do know that at the very least, they wanted to remove all “un-German” people from the lands that Germany controlled or would control throughout the war. If you are a racial eugenicist, someone who believes that unwanted traits can be scientifically or criminally removed or bred out of a population, it's only logical that you would encourage the reproduction of the people you wanted.

By early 1945, the outcome of the Second World War was obvious to anyone. Italy had been knocked out, Germany was retreating on all fronts, and the Americans were within striking distance of the Japanese mainland. The question the Allies faced was how to end the war as quickly, and with as few casualties, as possible. This thinking would lead to one of the most controversial Allied actions of the war: the fire-bombing of Tokyo, codenamed Operation Meetinghouse. In this video, we’ll explore what Operation Meetinghouse was and ask whether it was the right call.

In 1894-5 Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War. With that victory the Japanese had hoped that Korea, a territory that had been giving tribute to China for centuries, would fall under it's control. It didn't, because Imperial Russia had military and economic interests in Korea that it was willing to go to war to defend. So, in 1904-1905, Japan and Russia went to war, partly over the question of who would be the dominant power in Korea. To the shock of almost everyone except the Japanese, Russia was defeated, and in the Treaty of Portsmouth which ended the war and which won American president Theodore Roosevelt the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in sponsoring and hammering out the treaty, Japan was recognized as having control over Korea, though no one asked the Koreans about it.

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was born in El Ferrol, Spain, on December 4th 1892. His father’s military background and his mother’s devout Catholicism shaped the young Franco into a hardline traditionalist and after an uneventful childhood he entered a military school and progressed into the army. Despite a lackluster performance in the academy, Franco proved to be an incredible soldier in the field. He spent over a decade fighting in Morocco where he soared up the ranks, becoming Spain’s youngest Captain, Major, and then General in 1926. He was admired for his bravery and personal discipline that earned him the respect of his men and others in the military establishment. Franco settled into the command of Zaragoza General Military Academy and spent several years quietly teaching the next generation of Spanish officers, but events were transpiring that would lead Franco down a very different path.

The official title of the Belgian kings is “King of the Belgians.” In Belgium, there is a difference between the titles “King of Belgium” and the “King of the Belgians.” The first suggests that the monarch is the owner of all of the country's land. The second title implies that he simply “reigns” over the Belgians in the constitutional monarchy that's existed in the country since it separated from Holland and the “United Kingdom of the Netherlands” in 1830. The Belgian king, and its been a king, not a queen, since independence, was never an absolute monarch, though in the 19th century, the king had considerable more power and influence than King Philippe does today.

From 1885-1961, Rwanda was a possession of two European countries, Germany, from 1885-1919, and Belgium, from 1919 to 1961. The same held true in neighboring Burundi, which was also populated by Hutu and Tutsi peoples. During this period, European ideas about ethnicity and racial superiority permeated much of Africa. To many Europeans, there was no doubt, white Europeans were superior to black Africans. BUT, people are people, no matter what their color, and it doesn't take much for one group of people to hate another, even if they look very similar to each other.

North Korea is not your typical communist state. It strangely includes racial and social prejudice in how its society is formed, and what's more, includes the unborn in its classification system, called “Songbun.” Though there are literally dozens of classifications within North Korean, there are three basic categories: “Core,” “Wavering,” and “Hostile.”

Before WWII, or better yet, before Japan's invasion of China in 1937, Shiro Ishii and Masaji Kitano were respected medical researchers. Ishii had graduated from the prestigious Kyoto Imperial University in 1916 , and Kitano from the equally prestigious Tokyo Imperial University in 1920. Both later received their Ph.D's in the study of infectious disease and related areas. Kitano was particularly interested in the effects of disease and injury on the intestines and digestive system.

The Dominion of Pakistan came into existence in 1947. Covering the modern area of Pakistan in the West and Bangladesh in the East, their shared Muslim faith was not enough to bridge the many linguistic, ethnic, and cultural gaps between the two sides of the country. West Pakistan and its Urdu-speaking elites dominated the entire state, although the ethnically Bengali East were the majority of the population. The Bengali majority was discriminated against in education, the military, politics, and other aspects of life. This discrimination fell especially hard on the Hindu minority, but the Muslim majority was also characterized as a lesser cultural and racial group to the Western Pakistani. The Pakistani government also tried to suppress Bengali culture, arts, and literature as too “Hindu leaning.” On top of this, economic exploitation of the East’s resources with minimal return investment also created resentment and left the East feeling more like a colony than an equal partner.

What happens when a group of men are let loose in the wilderness with no oversight and a simple instruction: kill anything that moves? Tiger Force is the answer. An elite recon group of the Vietnam War whose war crimes were covered up by the US government for decades. In this video, we look at the atrocities committed by the men of Tiger Force as they descended into barbarity in the jungle of Vietnam, and how the US government tried to hide it from the world.

Slavery has existed in Africa for as long as recorded history. Ancient Egypt had slaves toiling away in its fields and on its monuments, ancient Carthage trafficked in slaves across the Mediterranean, and the Ethiopian kings of Aksum wrote proudly of the slaves they took in war. Slaves were also exported from Africa for centuries before Europeans arrived. The Trans-Saharan slave trade lasted for over a thousand years and dragged about 10 million people across the desert to be slaves in the Islamic world. The Indian Ocean also had a similarly long-lasting ocean-going slave trade with about 5 million ending up in slave ships, bound and branded for use in foreign lands. These slaves ended up as labourers, domestic servants, soldiers, or more. Male slaves in the Islamic world were typically castrated which meant that new slaves had to be regularly imported to maintain the population.