On this day:

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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The sinking of MV Conception occurred on September 2, 2019, when the 75-foot (23 m) dive boat caught fire and eventually sank off the coast of Santa Cruz Island, California, United States.

The boat was anchored overnight at Platts Harbor, a small undeveloped bay on the north shore of the island, with 33 passengers and 1 crew member asleep below decks when fire broke out shortly after 3 a.m.

Five crew members, whose sleeping quarters were on the top deck, survived while everyone else on board died. The crew members were forced by the fire to jump overboard but not before placing an initial mayday call to the Coast Guard and attempting to alert the passengers.

The crew retrieved the Conception's skiff and motored to a nearby boat where a second radio dispatch was made. The rescue and recovery operations were coordinated by the United States Coast Guard.

Federal safety officials determined that a failure by Truth Aquatics — the owner and operator of the Conception dive boat — to provide effective safety oversight was the probable cause of the vessel catching fire and sinking last year, killing 34 people near Santa Cruz Island.

Families of the 34 victims of the dive boat Conception that caught fire near Santa Cruz Island two years ago, resulting in the deaths of all passengers and one crew member, sued the U.S. Coast Guard 9/1/2021 in Los Angeles. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles federal court, alleges the Coast Guard failed to enforce regulations and allowed the vessel to operate with electrical and safety problems that resulted in the deaths.

The boat's captain, Jerry Boylan, faces 34 counts of seaman's manslaughter in a separate suit for alleged "misconduct, negligence, and inattention" to duties leading to the 2019 fire on Labor Day weekend.

The fire prompted criminal and safety investigations. Victims' families have also filed claims against the boat owners, Glen and Dana Fritzler and Truth Aquatics.

The company, in turn, filed a legal claim to shield them from damages under a maritime law that limits liability for vessel owners.

The families' suits allege that the 41-year-old Conception was in blatant violation of numerous Coast Guard regulations, including failing to maintain an overnight "roving" safety watch and failure to provide a safe means for storing and charging lithium-ion batteries, and that the below-decks passenger accommodations lacked emergency exits.

It is the worst maritime disaster in California since the sinking of the Brother Jonathan in 1865, and the deadliest in the United States overall since the USS Iowa turret explosion in 1989.

 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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A three-day hostage crisis at a Russian school comes to a violent conclusion September 3, 2004 after a gun battle erupts between the hostage-takers and Russian security forces. In the end, over 300 people died, many of them children, while hundreds more were injured.

On the morning of September 1, a group of Chechan terrorists surrounded students, teachers and parents on the playground of School No. 1 in Beslan as they held a celebration in honor of the first day of the school year. Some people managed to escape while others were killed; however, the majority, an estimated 1,200 adults and children, were herded into the school gym, which the hostage-takers rigged with a number of explosive devices. Later that day, Russian authorities began negotiation talks with the terrorist, whose demands included the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. Negotiations broke down after two days and early on the afternoon of September 3, an explosion went off in the gym–accidentally, according to some survivors. Some hostages died immediately, and more were killed or injured when the gym collapsed. Further chaos ensued as Russian police and soldiers opened fire on the school. Some hostages were moved to the cafeteria and forced to stand at the windows as human shields, where they where caught in the crossfire.

In total, 331 people were killed as a result of the seige, 186 of them children, and over 700 more individuals were injured. Russian authorities claimed there was a total of 32 terrorists, 31 of whom died during the siege. Some surviving hostages claimed there had been additional terrorists who managed to escape. Residents of Beslan blamed Russian authorities for badly mishandling the crisis, saying rescue operations were poorly planned and troops used excessive force.

Within weeks of the attack, a Russian parliamentary commission was convened, and in December 2006 it issued a report that absolved the authorities of any blame in the outcome of the siege. Details of that report contradicted eyewitness testimony, and survivors and family members of victims characterized the official account as a whitewash. In November 2007 a group of more than 350 Beslan family members and survivors brought a civil suit against the Russian government in the European Court of Human Rights, the judicial organ of the Council of Europe. A second suit was filed in 2011 by an additional 55 Beslan survivors. In April 2017 the court ruled that Russian authorities had failed on numerous levels prior to and during the siege, and it awarded the victims $3.1 million in compensatory damages. The judgment found that officials had ignored concrete intelligence that indicated that an attack on the school was imminent. Additionally, the weapons used in the military response—which included flame throwers, grenade launchers, heavy machine guns, thermobaric charges, antitank rockets, and T-72 main battle tanks—were both excessive and indiscriminate for the purposes of a hostage rescue. Russian officials rejected the findings, describing them as “utterly unacceptable,” and vowed to appeal the decision.

Shamil Basayev, a militant Islamist and leader of the Chechen separatist movement, claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege. In 2006, Nurpashi Kulayev, the only known surviving hostage-taker, was sentenced to life in prison. That same year, Basayev died in an explosion, the cause of which remains unclear.

Placing blame: Making sense of Beslan

 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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By 1888, photographers had been fixing images on plates for more than six decades, and some of them produced impressive portraits, photojournalism, and landscapes. But no one could do such things easily.

The first prerequisite for effortless picture taking came in 1871, when Richard Maddox invented highly sensitive dry plates—glass coated with gelatin emulsion. That step eliminated the awkward coating-exposure-processing sequence that had to be done on-site when using the wet-plate process.

But an entire suite of improvements still needed to be made, and they came from an unlikely innovator: George Eastman, a bank clerk in Rochester, N.Y. In 1877, Eastman bought a camera and wet-plate gear to use on a trip to Santo Domingo. The trip fell through, but it prompted Eastman to experiment with new emulsion coatings, and in 1879 he patented a coating machine. In 1884 he replaced the glass support with a negative stripping film made of three layers—paper, soluble gelatin, and gelatin emulsion. In 1885 he added a convenient roll holder.

The final step came 130 years ago, on 4 September 1888, when Eastman was awarded U.S. Patent No. 388,850 for a small, handheld, easy-to-use camera. His company had already begun making it three months earlier.

Eastman called the camera a Kodak because he liked the ring of it. It was a wooden rectangular prism 9.5 by 8.3 by 16.5 centimeters (3.75 by 3.25 by 6.5 inches) covered in smooth black leather. Its 57-millimeter lens had good close-focusing capabilities, allowing the photographer to focus on objects as close as 1.2 meters.

It wasn’t really as easy to use as its advertisements claimed—“You press the button, we do the rest”—but it was easy enough. You put the film in and advanced it, and after exposing all 50 or 100 frames (there was no exposure counter), you rewound it. Then, you had to ship the entire camera to Eastman’s factory in Rochester to be developed and printed. The first model cost US $25 (more than $600 in 2018 terms).

Before the century’s end, the product line included, for the first time, film for a non-Kodak camera: the miniature (5 by 4 by 4 cm) Kombi pocket camera, with 25 exposures and a price of about $3.00. Also added were the Bull’s Eye camera, which allowed users to remove the exposed film in daylight and develop it at home, selling for $7.50 or so, and (in 1897) the Folding Pocket Kodak camera, the prototype of the roll-film designs that dominated the market over the next six decades.

Kodak kept its technical leadership by introducing the first safety film (made of cellulose acetate, rather than of highly flammable cellulose nitrate) in 1908. Amateur movie cameras followed in 1923, the first 35-mm precision Kodak Retina cameras in 1934, the first slide projector in 1937, Kodacolor film in 1942, and the Kodak Instamatic in 1963. That line of cameras sold more than 50 million units by 1970 making it the most successful tool of mass-scale amateur photography. I owned one.

Impressively, it was Kodak—the master of film—that in 1975 invented the world’s first digital camera, a toaster-size contraption with a resolution of 10,000 pixels. Yet although it kept a competitive position in this new filmless business for a while, it eventually lost the contest.

In 2012, Kodak entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy and sold all of its consumer and digital imaging patents for a mere pittance. The reorganized company, focusing on diverse imaging solutions (including instant-print cameras and 3D printing), is still around, but its stock has recently traded about 75 percent below its 2014 postbankruptcy peak. A brand that embodied generations of innovative American technical leadership has become yet another entry in the country’s manufacturing retreat.
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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"September 5, 1972 Palestinian terrorist group Black September took hostage and later killed 11 Israelis Olympic athletes and a German police officer during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany.

As the Israeli team member slept, eight members of the terrorist group scaled a fence to to enter the Olympic Village at 4:30 a.m. Clad in tracksuit and carrying duffel bags of weapons, the Black September members entered the two Israeli apartments with stolen keys.

Wrestling coach Moshe Weinberg and weightlifter Yossef Romano were killed during an initial struggle.

The intruders captured nine hostages: Yossef Gutfreund, a wrestling referee, sharpshooting coach Kehat Shorr, track and field coach Amitzur Shapira, fencing master Andre Spitzer, weightlifting judge Yakov Springer, wrestlers Eliezer Halfin and Mark Slavin, and weightlifters David Berger and Ze'ev Friedman.

Soon after the massacre began, a Black September spokesman called for the release 234 Palestinian prisoners and West German-held founders of the Red Army Faction, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.

For the next 24 hours, there was a tense stand-off between the German police and the eight highly-trained hostage takers. An attempt to storm the building was aborted when the terrorists, who were watching the police's preparations live on television, threatened to kill hostages if the police followed through.

Two more failed attempts followed, as the terrorists demanded a plane to fly out of Germany. In the end, the Black September members were given two helicopters to fly to the Munich airport. German snipers opened fire when the terrorists landed. The shootout killed the nine hostages and five of the terrorists. Three of the terrorists were captured."


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"Operation Wrath of God, covert assassination campaign carried out by Israel to avenge the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian militants in September 1972 at the Munich Olympics.

Although Israel had historically targeted the leaders of organizations such as Fatah, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the frequency of such assassinations by Israel escalated dramatically in the wake of the massacre in Munich. A secret Israeli committee chaired by Prime Minister Golda Meir and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan is said to have authorized the assassination of everyone directly or indirectly involved with Black September, the Fatah-affiliated group that had orchestrated the Munich killings. The Wrath of God hit squad—code-named Bayonet—was made up of members of Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, and supported by special operations teams from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The group spent years tracking down and killing those suspected of planning or participating in the Munich massacre. Three of the eight militants who had killed the athletes survived the massacre and were released weeks later from custody by the West German government in exchange for the crew of a hijacked Lufthansa jet; the other five died in a gun battle with police during a failed attempt to rescue the hostages.

The hit squad first killed Wael Zwaiter, a PLO organizer and cousin of Yāsir ʿArafāt, shooting him in the lobby of his Rome apartment building in October 1972. Mahmoud Hamshari, the PLO representative in Paris, was targeted next. After a Wrath of God member, posing as an Italian journalist, scheduled a telephone interview with Hamshari in December 1972, Wrath of God explosives experts broke into his home and planted a bomb in his telephone. Hamshari was called at the time arranged for the interview, and, when he identified himself, the bomb was activated remotely. He died in the explosion.

Four other suspects—Basil al-Kubaisi, Hussein Abad al-Chir, Zaid Muchassi, and Mohammed Boudia—were all killed during the next few months. The most spectacular mission in the Wrath of God campaign took place in April 1973. Ehud Barak, the leader of the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matcal unit, developed an audacious plan to strike at PLO leadership. Dubbed Operation Spring of Youth, the mission involved the amphibious insertion of commando teams into Beirut. Once ashore, they coordinated their efforts with Mossad agents already in the city and deflected attention by donning civilian clothing. While other commando teams staged diversionary raids throughout the city and a squad of Israeli paratroopers assaulted the PFLP headquarters, the main force targeted Muhammad Youssef Al-Najjar, Kamal Adwan, and Kamal Nasser, killing all three.

In 1973 the squad misidentified one of its targets and mistakenly killed an innocent man in Lillehammer, Norway. The investigation of the crime by Norwegian authorities led to the arrest and conviction of five Mossad operatives as well as to the unraveling of Mossad’s extensive network of agents and safehouses throughout Europe. Meir, responding to intense international pressure, suspended the targeted assassination program. Wrath of God’s intended target in Lillehammer had been Ali Hassan Salameh, a Fatah and Black September operations chief known to Mossad as the “Red Prince.” The Wrath of God program was reactivated for a final mission in 1979, when the squad assassinated Salameh in Beirut with a car bomb placed along a route that he frequented.


 

mudballs

Well-Known Member
one of the best stories in history....next time anyone thinks they're a badass in this world...read that post and cower like the pleeb you are. Long live Israel! im not jewish but man they've been treated like crap and i like to see the underdog kick ass sometimes.
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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On September 6, 2018 an off-duty Dallas police officer fatally shoots an unarmed Black man in the victim's own apartment.

Returning to her apartment complex in Dallas, Texas, police officer Amber Guyger entered the apartment of Botham Jean, believing it to be her own. The apartment door was ajar, she later testified, and when she entered she found a man inside. She fired her weapon, killing him.

Guyger was not arrested until three days later and was originally charged with manslaughter, rousing the anger of the public. She was eventually charged with murder.

Guyger claimed that exhaustion after a 13-hour shift caused her to mistakenly climb an extra flight of stairs and enter the wrong apartment, where she became frightened when she saw the silhouette of what she believed to be a burglar in what she believed to be her home. She also claimed that told him to raise his hands and that he began to move toward her before she shot him in the chest.

Prosecutors, however, argued that Guyger could hardly have confused a different door with a different doormat on a different level of the complex for her own, that Jean’s behavior—he was sitting on the couch eating ice cream—bore no resemblance to that of a burglar, and that Guyger broke police protocol by entering the apartment and firing her gun rather than calling for backup from the nearby police station.

Despite the judge’s decision to allow the jury to consider the “castle doctrine,” a Texas statute that justifies deadly force in defense of one’s home, the jury found Guyger guilty of murder, a charge she appealed. Guyger was the first Dallas police officer to be convicted of murder since 1973.

On October 2, 2019, Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison after the jury deliberated for an hour. During the sentencing hearing, Jean's mother Allison provided emotional testimony and some of Guyger's text messages and social media posts that were "racist and offensive" were shared. Jean's younger brother Brandt forgave and hugged Guyger during her sentencing. Jean's father Bertrum also stated that he forgave Guyger but had wanted a stiffer sentence. Trial judge Tammy Kemp, who is also African-American, drew controversy when she embraced Guyger and handed her a Bible, with the Freedom from Religion Foundation criticizing her for alleged proselytizing.

On August 5, 2021, the Fifth Texas Court of Appeals upheld Guyger's murder conviction, unanimously holding that the jury verdict was reasonable and Guyger's own testimony supported the murder charge.

Guyger is currently imprisoned in the Mountain View Correctional Center. She will be eligible for release as early as September 2024, although her full sentence runs until September 2029.
 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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The daylight attack against London on September 7, 1940, marked the opening phase of the German bomber offensive against Britain, which came to be called the Blitz (September 1940–May 1941) after the German word “blitzkrieg,” meaning “lightning war.” Daylight attacks soon gave way to night raids, which the British found difficult to counter. The British lacked effective antiaircraft artillery and searchlights, as well as night fighters that could find and shoot down an aircraft in darkness. London was subjected to Luftwaffe attacks for 76 consecutive nights. Nearly 2,000 people were killed on the first night of bombing.

The raids followed the failure of the German Luftwaffe to defeat Britain’s Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain (July–September 1940). Although the raids caused enormous destruction and heavy civilian casualties—some 43,000 British civilians were killed and another 139,000 were wounded—they had little effect on Britain’s ability to continue in the war and failed in its immediate purpose of dominating the skies in preparation for a German invasion of England.

During November, the offensive spread to the larger provincial cities in Britain. The attack on Coventry was particularly destructive; the German force of 509 bombers was guided by the X-Gerät intersecting beam system, and much of the old city center was destroyed, with 380 people killed and 865 injured. The bombing of Coventry came to be seen as a symbol of the barbarity of modern warfare.

In early 1941, the German navy persuaded Hitler to focus attacks on Britain’s maritime resources. In a series of 46 raids between February and May, ports including Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bristol, Swansea, Merseyside, Belfast, Clydeside, Newcastle, and Hull were pounded heavily, although they still managed to function.

Civil defense measures to protect the British people were far from adequate in the early stages of the battle. The government had not adopted the idea of building large shelters to protect the public from bombardment—as was the case in Germany—preferring to rely on semiprivate initiatives, such as the inadequate Anderson family shelters. It was only with reluctance that the underground railway (subway) system was made available to the people of London as an air-raid shelter, a decision that ultimately saved many thousands of lives. The stoical manner in which the people of Britain—especially in London—endured the Blitz made a deep impression on neutral commentators, and the radio broadcasts of U.S. journalist Ed Murrow helped persuade the U.S. public that Britain was not a beaten nation and would continue the fight against Nazi Germany.

During the spring of 1941, active British defenses began to improve. The numbers of antiaircraft guns and searchlights were increased, and in key areas they were radar-controlled to improve accuracy. The problem of guiding interceptors to their targets was partially solved by the introduction of heavily armed Bristol Beaufighters fitted with their own radar. These improvements were reflected in monthly German casualty figures, which rose from 28 in January to 124 in May.

The Blitz came to an effective close in May 1941 when Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union. The Luftwaffe did not have sufficient resources to conduct a two-front war, and German aircraft were redeployed to the east. This did not, however, prevent a final, vindictive flurry from the Luftwaffe; on May 10, a raid against central London led to the highest nightly casualty figure of the battle: 1,364 killed and 1,616 seriously wounded. 7,736 children were killed and 7,622 seriously wounded. Many children were orphaned or lost brothers and sisters.


 

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
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(Picture on the right, they are cutting up a decomposing horse for food)

The Siege of Leningrad, also called 900-day siege, prolonged siege (September 8, 1941–January 27, 1944) of the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the Soviet Union by German and Finnish armed forces during World War II. The siege actually lasted 872 days.

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German armies had by early September approached Leningrad from the west and south while their Finnish allies approached to the north down the Karelian Isthmus. Leningrad’s entire able-bodied population was mobilized to build antitank fortifications along the city’s perimeter in support of the city’s 200,000 Red Army defenders. Leningrad’s defenses soon stabilized, but by early November it had been almost completely encircled, with all its vital rail and other supply lines to the Soviet interior cut off.

The ensuing German blockade and siege claimed 650,000 Leningrader lives in 1942 alone, mostly from starvation, exposure, disease, and shelling from distant German artillery. Sparse food and fuel supplies reached the city by barge in the summer and by truck and ice-borne sled in winter across Lake Ladoga. These supplies kept the city’s arms factories operating and its two million inhabitants barely alive in 1942, while one million more of its children, sick, and elderly were being evacuated. There were somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 documented cases of cannibalism throughout the siege. Rations were reserved for those most integral to the protection of the city. As a result, children were not a priority for food.

On January 27, 1944, after nearly 900 days under blockade, Leningrad was freed. The victory was heralded with a 24-salvo salute from the city’s guns, and civilians broke into spontaneous celebrations in the streets. “People brought out vodka,” Leningrader Olga Grechina wrote. “We sang, cried, laughed; but it was sad all the same—the losses were just too large.”

In total, the siege of Leningrad had killed an estimated 800,000 civilians—nearly as many as all the World War II deaths of the United States and the United Kingdom combined.


 

injinji

Well-Known Member
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(Picture on the right, they are cutting up a decomposing horse for food)

The Siege of Leningrad, also called 900-day siege, prolonged siege (September 8, 1941–January 27, 1944) of the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the Soviet Union by German and Finnish armed forces during World War II. The siege actually lasted 872 days.

After Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, German armies had by early September approached Leningrad from the west and south while their Finnish allies approached to the north down the Karelian Isthmus. Leningrad’s entire able-bodied population was mobilized to build antitank fortifications along the city’s perimeter in support of the city’s 200,000 Red Army defenders. Leningrad’s defenses soon stabilized, but by early November it had been almost completely encircled, with all its vital rail and other supply lines to the Soviet interior cut off.

The ensuing German blockade and siege claimed 650,000 Leningrader lives in 1942 alone, mostly from starvation, exposure, disease, and shelling from distant German artillery. Sparse food and fuel supplies reached the city by barge in the summer and by truck and ice-borne sled in winter across Lake Ladoga. These supplies kept the city’s arms factories operating and its two million inhabitants barely alive in 1942, while one million more of its children, sick, and elderly were being evacuated. There were somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 documented cases of cannibalism throughout the siege. Rations were reserved for those most integral to the protection of the city. As a result, children were not a priority for food.

On January 27, 1944, after nearly 900 days under blockade, Leningrad was freed. The victory was heralded with a 24-salvo salute from the city’s guns, and civilians broke into spontaneous celebrations in the streets. “People brought out vodka,” Leningrader Olga Grechina wrote. “We sang, cried, laughed; but it was sad all the same—the losses were just too large.”

In total, the siege of Leningrad had killed an estimated 800,000 civilians—nearly as many as all the World War II deaths of the United States and the United Kingdom combined.


Thank the Good Lord for the Red Army. They killed nine out of every ten German soldiers killed in WW2.
 
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