Jews, mostly Polish, had managed to escape the Nazi pogrom in Lithuania, but now they had nowhere to go. The Lithuanians did not want them among them. Most of them would have preferred to get rid of the Jews who had lived among them for…
Clara Petacci has etched herself in people's memories with a single photograph. It was taken on 29 April 1945 and shows her body hanging by her feet from a hook in Piazzale Loreto in Milan. Her skirt is shyly pinned together between her legs and…
The Italian football team Lucca was mediocre. Erno Egri Erbstein came in and it became great. The boys got a coach they had never known before: an undisputed football expert and a profound connoisseur of the human soul. Five years later, their paths diverged. A…
Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863-1938). One of the most famous Italian poets of all time, known as the one and only Il Vate (The Poet), a great national war hero, a breakneck adventurer, a genius and a harbinger of the future (Il Profeta), and above all a…
JANCFU, an unidentified US soldier wrote on the yellow casing. The abbreviation was an acronym for Joint Army Navy Civilian Fuckup. The crew of the B-29 Bockscar bomber signed the casing and added messages such as A second kiss for Hirohito or Here you go!…
"Thank you for your telegram. Yesterday I told your government how war can still be avoided. Although I asked for an explanation by noon today, so far my ambassador has not yet sent me any reply from your government. I am therefore forced to mobilise…
Alexandre Dumas was the most prolific and almost certainly the most popular writer in France in the 18th century. His Three Musketeers are still sought after by readers around the world today. And who doesn't know the novel about the Count of Monte Cristo? The…
We all know about the books and films about James Bond, the charming spy in Her Majesty's service, written by Ian Fleming. The exciting life of the fictional secret agent, sipping cocktails in prestigious hotels, driving fast cars and seducing a different beauty every night,…
The life story of Russian football's greatest talent reads like a post-war history of the Soviet Union. It is a story of Khrushchev and Brezhnev, of drunkenness and state honours, of labour camps and persecution, a story of eternal glory. At the age of 18,…
On 17 March 1945, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary. In the eyes of the public, they were the ideal spouses, parents of five children and a model presidential couple who had spent the last 12 years of their lives together…
