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6th June 2014

70 years ago the Normandy landings D-Day took place
Bernard Jordan, an 89-year-old D-Day veteran, was reportedly told by staff at the Pines nursing home in Furze Hill, also in England, that he couldn't travel to Normandy to be with his comrades for the 70th anniversary of the famous invasion.

On Thursday, Jordan went missing. The nursing home called the police, informing them that the veteran hadn’t been seen since leaving at around 10:30 a.m. that morning. (the Daily Mail reports)

So where did he go?

The Royal Navy veteran put on his war medals under a blue raincoat and met his former comrades on a coach. They arrived at a hotel in Ouistreham, northwestern France, about 12 hours later. He was going to Normandy — with or without permission.

Another one Jock Hutton 89 years old jumped with a parashoot from 5,000 feet to be with them  

3 months ago died the sailor of the epic kiss in Times Square

Glenn Mc Duffie was changing trains in New York when he learned that Japan had surrendered.

“I was so happy. I ran out in the street,” said Mr. McDuffie, then 18 and on his way to visit his girlfriend in Brooklyn.

“And then I saw that nurse,” he said. “She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face. I just went right to her and kissed her.”

The Longer the Waiting the Sweeter the Kiss

“We never spoke a word,” he added. “Afterward, I just went on the subway across the street and went to Brooklyn.”

8 June 2014

The last Navajo code-talker died last week at age 93 years.

The flags in the territories of Navajo race flown at half mast .

CChester Nez was the last of the 29 Navajo Indians who participated in the creation of the eponymous communication code that failed to be broken by the Japanese during WWII.

On the battlefield, the Indians «code talkers» verbally broadcast encrypted messages in their own language. Because the Navajo language is tonal and is not written, it was extremely difficult for someone who is not the mother tongue to learn and even more difficult, that is impossible as it turned out, was the decoding of messages.

You cannot avoid thinking that these Navajo people may have saved United States while almost all native Indians have been killed by them, and they did it with such a commitment and heroism these few courageous that have survived. This proves how important is to accept differentiality and protect all cultures and all races to survive and thrive in peace cause there lies the light of Knowledge and civilization.

16th of June  South Africa Youth Day 

16th of June seems to be a date with significant impact in Africa's History, first it was back in 1913 when the Bandu Land Act was legislated.

It was an act of the Parliament of south Africa aimed at regulating the acquisition of land by "natives", i.e. black people. The Act formed an important part of the system of Apartheid and is of importance for both legal and historical reasons.

The Act created a system of land tenure that deprived the majority of South Africa's inhabitants of the right to own land which had major socio-economic repercussion. 

Another act of the Parliament was Bantu Educational Act in 1953 that led in Soweto students Uprising later on 16th of June 1976. It was saying...

“There is no place for [the African] in the European community above the level of certain forms of labour. It is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim, absorption in the European community”

It all began as a peaceful protest march, but ended with violence, tears, blood and death of a 13 year old boy, Hector Peterson. The Soweto uprising began when more than 20 000 learners marched against the use of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction in Black secondary schools. The uprising then escalated into a nation-wide revolt, revitalising the struggle for liberation in South Africa.

Apart from the language issue, students also demanded an r education as good as that provided for white students.  Police used teargas to disperse the crowd and students started throwing stones in retaliation. Police then responded by firing live bullets, killing thirteen year old Hector Petersen.

Africa During the next few days crowds attacked everything they associated with the apartheid government. Vehicles and buildings were stoned and set alight and two white officials were beaten to death.  Police continued to use force in an attempt to quell the rioting. Youth Day marks not just the sacrifices made by the youth on that day, but also of those children who defied “Bantu Education”and took up arms in the struggle for freedom.

This was the youth with a dream and a mission

Driven by a vision and a passion and

Inspiration drawn from the harshest of all situations

Their burning desire for democracy and recognition

Drove them to take action and stand for what they believed in.

These were role models and indeed the greatest of all leaders,

True leaders who held their visions of the future at the centre of themselves

And role models who believed that their actions would create the future

A future for them, a future for you and I

At least today and now you and I can testify on their behalf.

 Thousands of students were exiled in Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. The majority joined the African National Congress (ANC) and some opted to undergo military training. Others joined the PAC also with the intention of undergoing military training. It was those that joined the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) who made an early return as trained cadres, attacking key government installations and persons believed to have been working for the apartheid government. Known as the June 16 Detachment, they included Solomon Mahlangu, executed for his role in an attack in Johannesburg in 1977 and the Silverton Trio, killed by a police sniper during a siege of the Volkskas Bank in Pretoria.

Youth Day is commemorated annually on 16 June.

And yet, there is hope;
A light shines that cannot be put out.
It has burned throughout the dark night of the past,
And continues to give courage to the youth today.

Because to those who are brave enough,
To those who know that they must stand up and fight,
The future has been given – 
They are the inheritors of the rainbow nation.

We accept the past as part of our history,
Yet we do not live by it.
Forming new links and relationships every day,
We find strength in our shared humanity.

As children of Africa, united,
The burden becomes lighter.
The future has been handed to us 
And it is a bright one.

21 June 2014

21 June 1851 in London the Immortal Game was played between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Keiseritzky during a break of the first international tournament. The bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time. Anderssen gave up both rooks and a bishop, then his Queen, checkmating his opponent with his three remaining minor pieces! The game has been called an achievement "perhaps unparalleled in chess literature".

Adolf Anderssen was one of the strongest players of his time, and many consider him to have been the world's strongest player after his victory in the London 1851 Chess tournament. Lionel Kieseritzky lived in France much of his life, where he gave chess lessons, and played games for five francs an hour at the Café de la Régence in Paris. Kieseritzky was well known for being able to beat lesser players despite handicapping himself—for example, by playing without his queen.Played between the two great players at the Simpson's in the Strand Divan in London

 the Immortal Game was an informal one, played during a break in a formal tournament. Kieseritzky was very impressed when the game was over, and telegraphed the moves of the game to his Parisian chess club. The French chess magazine La Régence published the game in July 1851. This game was nicknamed "The Immortal Game" in 1855 by the Austrian Ernst Falkbeer.

In this game, Anderssen wins despite sacrificing a bishop (on move 11), both rooks (starting on move 18), and the queen (on move 22) to produce checkmate against Kieseritzky who only lost three pawns. He offered both rooks to show that two active pieces are worth a dozen inactive pieces.

This game is acclaimed as an excellent demonstration of the style of chess play in the 19th century, where rapid development and attack were considered the most effective way to win, where many gambits and counter-gambits were offered (and not accepting them would be considered slightly ungentlemanly), and where material was often held in contempt. These games, with their rapid attacks and counter-attacks, are often entertaining to review, even if some of the moves would no longer be considered the best by today's standards.

23 June The Olympic Movement

  First Olympic Congress and rebirth of the Olympic Games on 23 June 1894 in Paris.

International Olympic Committee (IOC) was also instituted during this congress by Pierre de Coubertin. The committee was housed at the Mont-Repos villa in Lausanne.

Ancient Greece was the birthplace of the Olympic Games, Athens was considered to be an appropriate choice to stage the inaugural modern Games. It was unanimously chosen as the host city during a congress organised by Pierre de Coubertin in Paris on 23 June 1894.

Pierre de Coubertin had already attempted to restart the Olympic Games at the congress for the fifth anniversary of the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques in 1892. While he may have raised the enthusiasm of the public, he didn't manage to establish a proper commitment.

He decided to reiterate his efforts at the congress in 1894 which followed, which would openly address the issue of amateur sports, but also with the sub-text of the recreation of the Olympic Games. Six of the seven points which would be debated pertained to amateurism (definition, disqualification, betting, etc.) and the seventh on the possibility of restoring the Games.

Pierre De Coubertin loved rowing and he has said that rowing is the only sport where the athlete can see the finishing line only with the eyes of his soul. Here in Leman lake a few weeks before he crosses the finishing line of his life... what an excellent man he had been!

Coubertin's advocacy for the Games centred on a number of ideals about sport. He believed that the early ancient Olympics encouraged competition among amateur rather than professional athletes, and saw value in that. The ancient practice of a sacred truce in association with the Games might have modern implications, giving the Olympics a role in promoting peace. This role was reinforced in Coubertin's mind by the tendency of athletic competition to promote understanding across cultures, thereby lessening the dangers of war. In addition, he saw the Games as important in advocating his philosophical ideal for athletic competition: that the competition itself, the struggle to overcome one's opponent, was more important than winning.

He gained support from several personalities: the King of the Belgians, the Prince of Wales, the crown prince Constantine (hereditary prince of Greece) and William Penny Brookes, the founder of the "Olympian Games" in Shropshire, England, and Ioannis Phokianos. Phokianos was a professor of mathematics and physics and a college principal. Phokianos was also one of the propagators of sport in Greece and the organiser of an Olympic Games sponsored by Evangelos Zappas in 1875. In 1888, Phokianos organised an elite and private Games as the founder of the Pan-Hellenic Gymnastic Club. Phokianos could not travel to Paris for financial reasons and because he was finalising the construction of his new college. In May 1894 he turned to one of the more eminent representatives of the Greek community in Paris,Demetrios Vikelas

Demetrios Vikelas was a Greek businessman and writer. He had been made a knight of the Legion Of  Honor on 31 December 1891, and honorary doctor of the University of St.Andrews in November 1893 (the first Greek to receive this honor)  to whom Phokianos wrote to ask him to take part in the congress on amateurism convened the following month by Pierre De Coubertin. After hesitation, he agreed to represent the association.

Following the congress it was decided to recreate the Olympic Games and to organise them in Athens. Because of his reputation and the fact that he lived in Paris, he was chosen to represent Greece in a congress called by Pierre de Coubertin in June 1894, which decided to re-establish the Olympic Games and to organise them in Athens in 1896, designating Vikelas to preside over the organisation committee. On 23 June 1894 Demetrios Vikelas became the first president of the International Olympic Committee  (IOC), from 1894 to 1896

Originally, it had been De Coubertin's idea to hold the first celebration of the modern Olympics  in Paris  in 1900, but Vikelas convinced him and the newly created International Olympic Committee  that they should be held in Athens, in order to symbolically link them to the original Games.

As the constitution of the IOC at that time required the IOC president to be from the country which would host the next Games, Vikelas became the IOC's first president. The 1896 Athens Games was funded by the legacies of Evangelis Zappas and his cousin Konstantinos Zappas and by George Averoff  who had been specifically requested by the Greek government, through crown prince Constantine, to sponsor the second refurbishment of the Panathinaiko Stadium. This the Greek government did despite the fact that the cost of refurbishing the stadium in marble had already been funded in full by Evangelis Zappas forty years earlier 

Spyridon Louis was the first Marathon winner in Athens Olympic Games 1896

The stated mission of the IOC is to promote Olympism throughout the world and to lead the Olympic Movement.

In detail the role of the IOC, according to the Olympic Charter, is:

• To encourage and support the promotion of ethics in sport as well as education of youth through sport and to dedicate its efforts to ensuring that, in sport, the spirit of fair play prevails and violence is banned;
• To encourage and support the organisation, development and coordination of sport and sports competitions;
• To ensure the regular celebration of the Olympic Games;
• To cooperate with the competent public or private organisations and authorities in the endeavour to place sport at the service of humanity and thereby to promote peace;
• To take action in order to strengthen the unity and to protect the independence of the Olympic Movement;
• To act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement;
• To encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women;
• To lead the fight against doping in sport;
• To encourage and support measures protecting the health of athletes;
• To oppose any political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes;
• To encourage and support the efforts of sports organisations and public authorities to provide for the social and professional future of athletes;
• To encourage and support the development of sport for all;
• To encourage and support a responsible concern for environmental issues, to promote sustainable development in sport and to require that the Olympic Games are held accordingly;
• To promote a positive legacy from the Olympic Games to the host cities and host countries; 
• To encourage and support initiatives blending sport with culture and education;
• To encourage and support the activities of the International Olympic Academy (IOA) and other institutions which dedicate themselves to Olympic education.

Honours

In addition to the Olympic medals for competitors, the IOC awards a number of other honours:

• the IOC President's Trophy is the highest sports award given to athletes who have excelled in their sport and had an extraordinary career and created a lasting impact on their sport.
• the Pierre de Coubertin medal is awarded to athletes who demonstrate a special spirit of sportsmanship in Olympic events
• the Olympic Cup is awarded to institutions or associations with a record of merit and integrity in actively developing the Olympic Movement
• the Olympic Order is awarded to individuals for particularly distinguished contributions to the Olympic Movement, and superseded the Olympic Certificate.

27 June

In June 1963 John F. Kennedy became the first serving President of the USA to visit Ireland. He came to visit the land of his ancestors while on a European tour.

Kennedy was proud of his Irish roots and on his first full day in Ireland on 27 June he made a special visit to his ancestral home in Dunganstown, County Wexford, while in the country. There, he was greeted by a crowd waving both American and Irish flags and was serenaded by a boys choir that sang "The Boys of Wexford." According to the BBC report that day, Kennedy broke away from his bodyguards and joined the choir for the second chorus, prompting misty-eyed reactions from both observers and the press.

Kennedy met with 15 members of his extended Irish family at the Kennedy homestead in Dunganstown. There he enjoyed a cup of tea and some cake and made a toast to "all those Kennedys who went and all those Kennedys who stayed." His great-grandfather Thomas Fitzgerald had left Ireland for the United States in the middle of the Great Famine of 1848 and settled in Boston, becoming a cooper. Generations of his descendants went on to make their mark on American politics.JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, was a successful businessman who was highly influential in state and national politics. He served as President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission from 1933 to 1935 and as ambassador to England from 1938 to 1940

At the time of JFK's visit to Ireland, the predominantly Catholic Irish Republic had been an independent nation for 41 years. The northern counties of the island, however, remained part of the largely Protestant British Empire and still suffered from long-standing sectarian violence. The next day, in Dublin, Kennedy spoke before the Irish parliament, where he openly condemned Britain's history of persecuting Irish Catholics. Two days later, he traveled to England, America's oldest ally, to meet with British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan and his cabinet to discuss setting up a pro-democratic regime in British Guyana. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963, only five months after his visit to Ireland, when he had won the hearts of the Irish people.

28 June 2014

June is a favourite month for poets and writers seeking imagery and atmosphere but this beautiful love song  has never been bettered,  whether sung to the tune Burns himself put the words to, or in the better known version popularised by his publisher, George Thomson.

American singer songwriter Bob Dylan selected Burns' 1794 song A Red, Red Rose, as the lyrics that have had the biggest effect on his life.

Legend has it that 'A Red, Red Rose' was written  by Robert Burns for his wife Jean Armour in late June. The lyrics of the song are simple but effective. "My luve's like a red, red rose/That's newly sprung in June" describe a love that is both fresh and long lasting.

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!
And fare-thee-weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

 I believe that Robert Burns had written this poem in late June 1786  to sung it to Jean Armour who was 6 months pregnant while he was planning to set off  for Jamaica along with Mary Campbell. The reader should keep in mind the fact that Burns constructed the poem, stanza by stanza, by “deconstructing” old songs and ballads to use parts that he could revise and improve. For example, Burns’s first stanza may be compared with his source, “The Wanton Wife of Castle Gate”: “Her cheeks are like the roses/ That blossom fresh in June;/ O, she’s like a new-strung instrument/ That’s newly put in tune.” Clearly, Burns’s version is more delicate, while at the same time audaciously calculated. By emphasizing the absolute redness of the rose

—the “red, red rose”—the poet demonstrates his seeming artlessness as a sign of sincerity. What other poet could rhyme “June” and “tune” without appearing hackneyed? With Burns the very simplicity of the language works toward an effect of absolute purity. The reader cannot help but admire Burns’s art in revising the meter of his source for the last stanza, an old song titled “The True Lover’s Farewell”: “Fare you well, my own true love/ And fare you well for a while,/ And I will be sure to return back again/ If I go ten thousand mile.” Although Burns’s revisions are minor, they reveal the difference in technique between a merely competent poet and a master.

Antoin de saint Exupery started to write Little Prince in late june 1942 after he came back from Quebec to long Island with his wife from el Salvador, the rose of his life, at that period he has drawn little prince to take care of his lovely rose on his small planet may be thinking of himself cause during his early years friends and family called him le Roi-Soleil (the Sun King) due to his golden curly hair

Next day I will reveal you who was another real little prince who was cultivating his small garden and was living in love under the blue unaltered sky of aegean islands, a warrior of light I have met long ago

29 June

On a sunny morning like this, some 8 years ago, kyr-Dimitros left his last breath after spending all of his life on his island in the sun cultivating his pergadiles and looking at golden Aegean sunsets

I met him 20 years ago in some summers I spent in beautiful Amorgos Island, spending many hours every day in his taverna Kastro in Chora where he was peeling and frying potatoes every afternoon and roasting Greek coffees for everybody always with a smile from 6 o'clock in the morning

One day as I was standing beside him I asked him what was his secret with the fried potatoes and they become so gold and tastefull and he told me but i promised never to tell

30 June 2014

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band rocked London in Hard Rock Calling Festival at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park last year    

The nice thing about Bruce Springsteen is that although a global rock giant his humanity shines out, demonstrating as he does, a closeness and lack of pretention with his audience that is rare among performers of this stature.

Many times his went down the ramp to be close with the crowd and at one point took a girl on his shoulder up onto the stage. Member of his family were also included with Springsteen doing at one a jam with his sister and a waltz with his mother

1 July

Aye We Can 

1st July 1999  reopening of the Scottish Parliament after 300 years 

and Happy Canada Day "Canada's birthday"

the occasion marks the joining of the British North American colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and the Province of Canada into a federation of four provinces (the Province of Canada being divided, in the process, into Ontario and Quebec) on July 1, 1867

2 July

The first flight of Zeppelin LZ 1 over Lake Constance for 20' minutes (the Bodensee)1900

LZ-1 was overweight, and a severe lack of engine power and speed made it difficult to control in even slight winds; the engines themselves were unreliable, and one failed during the short maiden flight; the ship suffered from poor controllability due to its lack of horizontal or vertical stabilizing fins and control surfaces, and the sliding weight system jammed, eliminating pitch control; and most importantly, the structure itself lacked rigidity due to its weak tubular frame, which hogged during flight, with its center portion rising high above its drooping bow and stern.

But on 2nd of July even the crocodiles fly

On July 2, 1843, after a powerful storm was raining alligators in South Carolina and residents of Charleston who were walking by suddenly came face to teeth with an alligator standing on the corner of Wentworth and Anson, a narrow one-way street lined today with palm trees and power lines on the east side of Charleston near the French Quarter.   

The papers reported that the two-foot-long alligator “had a look of wonder and bewilderment about him,” which is no surprise after his wild ride on a thunderstorm Pinckney described as so terrible “the whole firmament growled thunder and shot lightning” which “burst overhead with a power that shook the solidest of structures.” Reports stated that the gator “was doing as well as an alligator could be expected to do” after the experience.

Independence day for USA gongratulations, with a poem of William Lloyd Garrison and a wish for all the countries to gain respect to their independence from USA as well, please give Peace a Chance

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end.
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But all to manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his prison-house, the thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

[COMMENT DELETED]

the Battle at Thermopylae

http://www.michaelfassbender.org/spcustoms.html

In the 5th century bc, the Persian empire fought the city-states of Greece in one of the most profoundly symbolic struggles in history. Their wars would determine the viability of a new direction in Western culture, for even as Greece stood poised to embark on an unprecedented voyage of the mind, Persia threatened to prevent the Hellenes from ever achieving their destiny. Persia represented the old ways — a world of magi and god-kings, where priests stood guard over knowledge and emperors treated even their highest subjects as slaves. The Greeks had cast off their own god-kings and were just beginning to test a limited concept of political freedom, to innovate in art, literature and religion, to develop new ways of thinking, unfettered by priestly tradition. And yet, despite those fundamental differences, the most memorable battle between Greeks and Persians would hinge on less ideological and more universal factors: the personality of a king and the training and courage of an extraordinary band of warriors. 

To the Greek strategists in 481 bc, Thermopylae represented their best chance to stop or at least delay the Persian army long enough to allow their combined fleets to draw the Persian navy into a decisive sea battle. A narrow mountain pass, Thermopylae was a bottleneck through which the Persian army somehow had to proceed. Forced to fight there, the Persians would be unable to take advantage of their massive preponderance in numbers; instead, they would have to face the Greeks in close-quarter, hand-to-hand combat.

Two armies now prepared to converge on the tiny mountain pass. For Xerxes no force, not even nature, would be allowed to resist his progress. When a violent storm tore up the first bridge his engineers had built across the Hellespont, the great king ordered his engineers put to death, and he had his men whip and curse the waters for defying him. New engineers then bridged the Hellespont again. Constructed from nearly 700 galleys and triremes lashed together, the bridge was a marvel of makeshift military engineering. Flax and papyrus cables held the boats in line, and sides were constructed to keep animals from seeing the water and panicking during their crossing. The Persian army advanced inexorably into Greece.

The Greek force that now raced to Thermopylae was ridiculously small for the challenge that awaited it: 300 Spartans, 80 Myceneans, 500 Tegeans, 700 Thespians and so forth, totaling about 4,900. The countrymen they left behind seem to have put little faith in this army. The Athenians voted to evacuate their city. Their men of military age embarked on ships, while women and children were sent to the safer territory of the Peloponnesus. Only treasurers and priestesses remained behind, charged with guarding the property of the gods on the Acropolis.

If any Greek understood the danger of his assignment, it was almost certainly the Spartan commander, Leonidas. Although each city's contingent had its own leader, Leonidas had been placed in overall command of the Greek army. One of two Spartan kings — Sparta had no kingship in any real sense — Leonidas traced his ancestry back to the demigod Heracles. He had handpicked the 300 warriors under his command; all were middle-aged men with children to leave behind as heirs. He had selected men to die, and done so apparently without the philosophic reluctance of Xerxes. Leonidas and the Spartans had been trained to do their duty, and, having received an oracle that Sparta must either lose a king or see the city destroyed, Leonidas was convinced that his final duty was death.

On the way to Thermopylae, Leonidas sent his widely admired Spartans ahead of the other troops to inspire them with confidence. They arrived to find the pass unoccupied. It was only 50 feet wide and far narrower at some points. There were hot springs there — these gave the pass its name — an altar to Heracles and the remains of an old wall with gates that had fallen into ruin. The Greeks now rushed to rebuild it.

As Xerxes' army drew closer, a Persian scout rode to survey the Greek camp. What he saw astonished him — the Spartans, many of them naked and exercising, the rest calmly combing their hair. It was common practice for the Spartans to fix their hair when they were about to risk their lives, but neither the scout nor his king could comprehend such apparent vanity.

The Greeks, too, began to receive intelligence on the size of the Persian force. Sometime before the battle, the Spartan Dieneces was told that when the Persian archers let loose a volley, their arrows would hide the sun. To Dieneces that was just as well. For if the Persians hide the sun, he said, we shall fight in the shade.Despite the imperturbable courage of Dieneces and the other Spartans, the Greeks were shaken when the Persian host finally neared their position. At a council of war the leaders debated retreat, until Leonidas' opinion prevailed. The Spartan would do his duty. The Greeks would stay put and try to hold off the Persians until reinforcements could arrive.

The Persian army encamped on the flat grounds of the town of Trachis, only a short distance from Thermopylae. There, Xerxes stopped his troops for four days, waiting upon the inevitable flight of the overawed Greeks. By the fifth day, August 17, 480 bc, the great king could no longer control his temper. The impudent Greeks were, like the storm at the Hellespont, defying his will. He now sent forward his first wave of troops — Medes and Cissians — with orders to take the Greeks alive.

The Medes and Cissians were repulsed with heavy casualties. Determined to punish the resisters, Xerxes sent in his Immortals. The crack Persian troops advanced confidently, envisioning an easy victory, but they had no more success than the Medes.

What Xerxes had not anticipated was that the Greeks held the tactical advantage at Thermopylae. The tight battlefield nullified the Persians' numerical preponderance, and it also prevented them from fighting the way they had been trained. Persian boys, it was said, were taught only three things: to ride, to tell the truth and to use the bow. There was no place for cavalry at Thermopylae and, even more critical, no place to volley arrows. The Greeks had positioned themselves behind the rebuilt wall. They would have to be rooted out the hard way.

The Persian army was neither trained nor equipped for such close fighting. Its preferred tactic was to volley arrows from a distance, the archers firing from behind the protection of wicker shields planted in the ground. They wore very little armor and carried only daggers and short spears for hand-to-hand combat.

Although students of military history argue that true shock warfare has seldom been practiced — since it is antithetical to the soldier's natural desire for self-preservation — the Greeks had made it their standard tactic. Greek soldiers perhaps drew some confidence from their heavy armor and their long spears, which could outreach the Persian swords. But the Greeks also had another, more intangible, edge: something to fight for. They were defending their homes, and they were doing their duty — they were not fighting as slaves of some half mad god-king. As heavy casualties sapped their soldiers' resolve, the Persian commanders had to resort to lashing them with whips in order to drive them against the determined Greek defenders.

During that long first day of fighting, the Spartans led the Greek resistance. Experienced Spartan warriors would come out from behind the walls, do fierce battle with the Persians, then feign retreat in order to draw the Persians into a trap. Xerxes reportedly leapt to his feet three times in fear for his army.

The second day of Thermopylae followed much the same course as the first. The various Greek contingents now took turns fending off the attacks, but the Persians failed to make any headway.

As a soul is bound to a body, so will a Spartan to his Shield. Woman gave the shield to the worrier asking for "Victory or Death"

It is difficult to say how long the Greeks could have held off the Persians at Thermopylae — their casualties thus far were comparatively light — but the question was soon made moot. When the Greeks had first arrived, they learned that the presumably impregnable site possessed a hidden weakness: There was a track through the mountains that could be used by an enemy force to surround and annihilate the defenders of the gate. Recognizing the danger, Leonidas had dispatched his Phocian contingent to guard the path. Thus the already small number of troops available at the gate was made smaller still by the division of the Greek forces. The Phocians themselves were charged with the difficult task of defending a route with no natural defenses. Their best hope — Greece's best hope — lay in the mountain track remaining unknown to the Persians.

It was, in the end, a Greek who betrayed that secret. The traitor, Ephialtes, was apparently motivated by greed when he revealed the mountain path to Xerxes. Acting immediately on the new information, the king sent Persian troops up the path during the night, when darkness concealed their movement among the oak trees. Near the top, they completely surprised the luckless Phocians. At last free to fight in their usual fashion, the Persians rained down arrows as the Phocians frantically sought to gather their arms. In desperation, the Phocians raced to higher ground for a last stand. The Persians, however, had no interest in chasing the Phocians higher but instead turned down the trail, aiming for the pass at Thermopylae.

Lookouts raced down the hill to warn Leonidas of the descending Persian army. There was little time left. A quick council of war led to the decision to split up the Greek force. There was no reason for the entire army to be annihilated at the wall. Most contingents were now allowed to return home and prepare for a later showdown. Leonidas and his Spartans, however, would remain at Thermopylae. Standing by them were the loyal Thespians, who considered it an honor to die fighting beside the Spartans. 

Although some have questioned the wisdom of Leonidas' decision, wondering if he was overly influenced by a mumbo-jumbo oracle prophesying his sacrificial death, the situation gave him no alternative. If the entire Greek army had fled, it would have eventually been caught from behind and slaughtered by the faster-moving Persian cavalry. Leonidas was giving the retreating troops the only chance they had to escape and fight another day.

On te last day the Greeks elected to inflict as much damage as possible on the Persian army. Knowing that this day's struggle would be their last, they pressed stolidly forward, leaving behind the safety of the wall to fight in the widest part of the pass. There, they would battle the massive Persian army on open ground. 

Xerxes ordered his men in for the kill. Once again his commanders lashed their own troops to drive them forward. Many Persians were trampled to death by their own comrades. Others, shoved aside, drowned in the sea. All the while, the Spartans and Thespians did their deadly work. No one, wrote Herodotus, could count the number of the dead.

The Greeks fought with their long spears until the shafts had all broken. Then they fought with swords. In the course of the struggle, Leonidas fulfilled the prophecy that had doomed him. Four times the Greeks then drove the enemy away from his body before the Persians finally succeeded in dragging it away. It was about then that the second Persian force arrived from the mountain pass.

Now completely surrounded, the exhausted Greeks withdrew for the last time behind the wall and formed themselves into a single compact body protected by their shields from the archers. Spartans were considering archers a womanish way of fight and they didn't like it. Here, wrote Herodotus, they resisted to the last, with their swords, if they had them, and, if not, with their hands and teeth, until the Persians, coming on from the front over the ruins of the wall and closing in from behind, finally overwhelmed them.

The Battle of Thermopylae was over. Leonidas and his 300 Spartans all lay dead, as did the 700 Thespians who had stood by them. The Persian dead were said to number around 20,000, although Xerxes tried to conceal this horrendous loss by having most of them secretly buried, leaving only about 1,000 Persian bodies for his army to see as it marched through the pass.

It was customary in Sparta to make great ceremony over the death of a king. Riders would carry the news throughout the country, and women would go around the capital, beating cauldrons. But Leonidas was denied even a proper burial. Xerxes ordered his head cut off and fixed on a stake. The rest of the Greek dead he ordered buried in order to conceal how few had held up his army for so long, and to remind his veterans of Thermopylae that the Spartans were mortal after all.

The Greeks' courageous stand at the mountain pass had hardly even slowed Xerxes' advance. Four days of waiting and three days of fighting — Leonidas' heroism had bought only one more week for his compatriots. Athens, all but abandoned, was soon sacked.

And yet Thermopylae was not a total failure. The invading army had been bloodied — badly, if Herodotus is to be believed — and it must have had some effect on Persian morale. The battle's influence on the Greeks was indisputable. When the war was over — for Greece did finally defeat the Persians — they established holidays commemorating Thermopylae and erected memorials over the battlefield. Four thousand men from Pelops' land/against three million once did stand read one. Another celebrated Leonidas and his 300 men: Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by/that here, obeying their commands, we lie.

Thermopylae thus acquired a significance that transcended its tangible military impact. In the end, the battle's value lay not in land gained or lost or in men killed or captured, but in inspiration. The Spartans and Thespians had taught Greece and the world an enduring lesson about courage in the face of impossible odds.

This article was written by David Frye and originally published in the January/February 2006 in military history magazine.

http://www.livius.org/he-hg/herodotus/logos7_22.html

22 September

Delphi is famous as the ancient sanctuary that grew rich as the seat of Pythia, the High Priestess of the Temple of Apollo, the oracle consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient classical world. Moreover, the Greeks considered Delphi the navel (or centre) of the world, as represented by the stone monument known as the Omphalos of Delphi.

In the summer of 480 BC, when Xerxes, the son of Darius the Great of Persia, returned to finish the job of conquering the Greeks in which his father had failed, the Athenians consulted the oracle. They were told:

Now your statues are standing and pouring sweat. They shiver with dread. The black blood drips from the highest rooftops. They have seen the necessity of evil. Get out, get out of my sanctum and drown your spirits in woe.

It was unambiguous. When persuaded to seek advice a second time, the oracle gave a way for the Athenians to escape their doom. When Athena approached her father to help her city, Zeus responded that he would grant that "a wall of wood alone shall be uncaptured, a boon to you and your children."

The oracle again advised the Athenians to flee:

Await not in quiet the coming of the horses, the marching feet, the armed host upon the land. Slip away. Turn your back. You will meet in battle anyway. O holy Salamis, you will be the death of many a woman's son between the seedtime and the harvest of the grain. 

Pray to the Winds. They will prove to be mighty allies of Greece.

Meanwhile, the Spartans also consulted the oracle and were told:

The strength of bulls or lions cannot stop the foe. No, he will not leave off, I say, until he tears the city or the king limb from limb.

or in a version according to Herodotus:

Hear your fate, O dwellers in Sparta of the wide spaces;

Either your famed, great town must be sacked by Perseus' sons,
Or, if that be not, the whole land of Lacedaemon
Shall mourn the death of a king of the house of Heracles,
For not the strength of lions or of bulls shall hold him,
Strength against strength; for he has the power of Zeus,
And will not be checked until one of these two he has consumed.

The Spartans withdrew in consternation, wondering which fate was worse. Events overtook the prophecy when the Persian army assaulted Thermopylae on September 8 (previous forum's page), where a Spartan-led coalition [popularly called the "300" after the number of Spartans sent (who were, excepting one man with an eye infection, killed to a man)] and allies held the pass against them. The Spartans under King Leonidas (The Lion) resisted the Persian advance at Thermopylae until betrayed by treachery. Refusing to retreat, the entire Spartan contingent, including their King (as foretold), lost their lives, but in so doing gained immortal fame. The Persian armada then sailed to nearby Cape Artemisium, where they were met by the Athenian fleet. The Athenian ships fought against great odds, but in three battles managed to hold their own.

A tremendous storm then arose at Artemesium, with the most violent winds attacking the ships for three days. The Persians lost about 20% of their warships and perhaps the same number of transport vessels to the storm. The stormy winds and huge waves did not harm the Athenian ships.

Back in Athens Themistocles argued that the wall of wood referred to the Athenian navy and persuaded the Athenians to pursue their policy of using wealth from their Attic silver mines at Laurium to continue building their fleet. On the grounds that the oracle referred to the nearby island of Salamis as "holy", he claimed that those slain would be Greece's enemies, not the Athenians. For these the oracle would have said "O cruel Salamis". His voice carried the day, Athens was evacuated to Salamis and in a following naval battle on 22 September 480 the Athenian fleet and its allies destroyed the Persian fleet at Salamis, while watched by Xerxes from mount Egaleo.

A king sate on the rocky brow
Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis
And ships, by thousands, lay below,
And men in nations;—all were his!
He counted them at break of day—
And when the sun set where were they?   by Lord Byron

Despite the fact that Athens was burned by the Persians, her occupants were saved, the Persian threat was ended and the authority of the Oracle was never higher.

The Spartan admiral, Evriviades wanted to defend at Corinthos straits. Themistocles, on the other hand, insisted that the Greek fleet should stay in Salamina to fight. At the council convened before the naval battle, Themistocles stopped the Corinthian Admiral, Unspecified. Evryviadis then told him that those who started before the slogan rapped, while Themistocles replied that those who started long after the slogan never get a prize. Evriviades tried to hit Themistocles, who avoided the hit and said the famous phrase "you can hit me but only if you listen to me first"  and the Spartan admiral calmed down and agreed with Themistocles plan

The naval battle of Salamis was fought in the straits between the mainland and Salamis, an island in the Saronic Gulf near Athens. 

Herodotus reports that there were 378 triremes in the Allied fleet and the Persian fleet initially numbered 1,207 triremes. Aeschylus, who fought at Salamis, also claims that he faced 1,207 warships there, of which 207 were "fast ships" 

http://www.poetry-archive.com/a/the_battle_of_salamis.html

Aeschylus claims that as the Persians approached (possibly implying that they were not already in the Straits at dawn), they heard the Greeks singing their battle hymn (paean) before they saw the Allied fleet:

 ἴτε παῖδες Ἑλλήνων
ἐλευθεροῦτε πατρίδ᾽, ἐλευθεροῦτε δὲ
παῖδας, γυναῖκας, θεῶν τέ πατρῴων ἕδη,
θήκας τε προγόνων:

νῦν ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀγών.

(this is very inspirational, thus cannot be translated)

Like the Battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, Salamis has gained something of a 'legendary' status (unlike, for instance, the more decisive Battle of Plataea), perhaps because of the desperate circumstances and the unlikely odds. A significant number of historians have stated that Salamis is one of the most significant battles in human history (though the same is often stated of Marathon). In a more extreme form of this argument, some historians argue that if the Greeks had lost at Salamis, the ensuing conquest of Greece by the Persians would have effectively stifled the growth of Western Civilization as we know it. This view is based on the premise that much of modern Western society, such as philosophy, science, personal freedom and democracy are rooted in the legacy of Ancient Greece. Thus, this school of thought argues that, given the domination of much of modern history by Western Civilization, Persian domination of Greece might have changed the whole trajectory of human history. It is also worth mentioning that the celebrated blossoming of hugely influential Athenian culture occurred only after the Persian wars were won

P.S. 6 months ago, archaeologists announced that they have uncovered the partially submerged remains of the anchorage used by the Greek warships prior to the Battle of Salamis. The site of the ancient mooring site is on the island of Salamis, at the coastal Ambelaki-Kynosaurus site

21 September

The Massacre of the Acqui Division was the mass execution of the men of the Italian 33rd Acqui Infantry Division by the Germans on the island of Cephalonia Greece, started on 21 September, and lasted for one week, following the Italian armistice during the Second World War.

One of the first men to die was the leader of the Acqui Division, General Gandin but just before he died he threw his Iron Cross into the dirt and then he was shot at the back  http://ww2gravestone.com/general/gandin-antonio

Into the next week, over the course of four hours, roughly 4,750 Italian soldiers had been massacred. When the massacre was over (or so it seemed), some 4,000 members of the Acqui Division remained. They were loaded into ships to be sent to German labor camps. Nearly all of them were killed when the ships they were imprisoned in hit mines in the Ionian Sea. In total, roughly 9,500 men of the Acqui Division were killed on Cephalonia in September of 1943.

The massacre provided the historical background to the novel Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which later became a Hollywood film. It was one of the largest prisoner of war massacres of the war and one of the largest-scale German atrocities to be committed by Wehrmacht troops, another worst example of Nazi brutality.

The subject of the massacre was largely ignored in Italy by the press and the educational system until 1980, when the Italian President Sandro Pertini, a former partisan, unveiled the memorial in Cephalonia. During the ceremony Ciampi, referring to the men of the Acqui Division, declared that their "conscious decision was the first act of resistance by an Italy freed from fascism" and that "they preferred to fight and die for their beliefs".

The Germans first killed the surrendering Italians, where they stood, using machine-guns. When a group of Bavarian soldiers objected to this practice they were threatened with summary execution themselves.After this stage was over, the Germans marched the remaining soldiers to the San Teodoro town hall and had the prisoners executed by eight member detachments.

Padre - Romualdo Formato, one of Acqui's seven chaplains and one of the few survivors, wrote that during the massacre, the Italian officers started to cry, pray and sing. Many were shouting the names of their mothers, wives and children. According to Formato's account, three officers hugged and stated that they were comrades while alive and now in death they would go together to paradise, while others were digging through the grass as if trying to escape. In one place, Formato recalled, "the Germans went around loudly offering medical help to those wounded. When about 20 men crawled forward, a machine-gun salvo finished them off."Officers gave Formato their personal belongings to take with him and give to their families back in Italy. The Germans, however, confiscated the items and Formato could no longer account for the exact number of the officers killed.   http://toscano27.wordpress.com/i-sopravvissuti/il-capitano-pampaloni/

There were few survivors, Battista Alborghetti was one of them:  A nightmare.I was in Kefallonia from November 1942 to November 1944, along with other 11,600 Italians. After September 8, 1943 – as a result of our refusal to surrender to the German army – 10,500 Italian soldiers were massacred. A terrible massacre, that still remains in my eyes and on my mind. There are so many images about those awful days of terror: stories of war and death, written in the blood of so many young people who pursued the dream of a better Italy. I was nineteen years old when I was assigned to the Divisione Acqui. The armistice proclaimed in Italy by General Badoglio changes our destinies.

Germans claim our surrender, but they do not offer sufficient guarantees about of the Italian troops repatriation. Italian officers called a consultation between the departments: it’s an unprecedented event in the modern army history. We decide to refuse surrender and not give our weapons to the Germans. And after that, the Apocalypse…

In the early hours of the battle I see my three companions dying. They fall down close to me. Some minutes later, a splinter of a grenade explosion hits my left leg. The Acqui Division – poor in weapons – is destroyed. People who do not succumb in the fighting they become prey of the Wehrmacht. German soldiers rakes the island, inch by inch. I escaped from the capture in a couple of occasions; I hide myself between mules and I repaire inside water pipes in the undergrowth. They capture me on September 21.

About 300 Officers (captains, lieutenats and second lieutenants) were captured and transferred to that, sadly, is now known as the “Red House”, in San Teodoro. Against every principle of the international conventions, they are shot within 36 hours, four people a turn… The corpses, weighed down with rolls of barbed wire, they were then thrown into the sea, sprinkled with petrol and burned in bonfires, whose light illuminated the night, leaving a foul smell in the air.

My companions were loaded onto trucks and taken somewhere: I won’t see them anymore. My friend, the second lieutenant Giampietro Matteri – from Dongo (Como), twenty-two years old – is killed on September 24. The same destiny for another friend, the second lieutenant Pillepich, from Trieste: I still remember the terror in his eyes when, together with eleven companions, he was dragged from the group. Few minutes later we heard the shots of machine guns, followed by cries of pain, yells, invocations. And then other shots. The finishing strokes.

At the concentration camp we were treated worse than beasts. In the morning, Wehrmacht officers assembled us, offering – as they were saying – “the chance to return to Italy”. But I always said to myself: if they want to kill me, I prefer that they do it here. We now know: who accepted that proposals they were shot. They were shipped on steamers, as easy targets for Stukas airplanes or for floating mines. It’s what that happened to my compatriot, Ferdinando Mangili. He climbed aboard of one of those ships that were full of soldiers who looked forward to reach home… But the ship was sunk off and the waves returned the corpses… The Germans forced me to bury the dead, all around the island. Chaplain father Luigi Ghilardini and I, we recomposed corpses or what was left of bodies mangled by bullets and then devoured by ravens and vultures…

One day the nazis picked up us suddenly and they brought us in the square of Lixouri, where they deployed 13 Greeks accused of being partisan. Those poor people were hunged under our eyes. It happened that one of them – because of a broken rope – fell to the ground. He was still alive. The Germans took him and hung him again …

In the 1950s, the remains of about 3,000 soldiers, including 189 officers, were exhumed and transported back to Italy for burial in the Italian War Cemetery in Bari. The remains of General Gandin were never identified.

In 2002 the Italian post issued the commemorative stamp Eccidio della Divisione Aqui. 

The Presidents of Greece and Italy periodically commemorate the event during ceremonies taking place in Cephalonia at the monument of the Acqui Division.

Cephalonia's Greco-Italian Society maintains an exhibition called "The Mediterraneo Exhibition", next to the Catholic church in Argostoli, where pictures, newspaper articles and documents showcasing the story of the massacre are displayed