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Mystery- The Haunted Town Of St. Nazianz, WI

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Mystery- The Haunted Town Of St. Nazianz, WI St. Nazians was founded by a priest who wholeheartedly believed to helped cursed the town. Over the years, the town has been hit with natural disasters and unexplained phenomena. Father Ambrose Oschwald was fled to Wisconsin in 1854 from religious persecution. The Roman Catholic Church had suspended him from his duties due to “mystical, prophetic, and heretical works.” Already, the scary history of the town is starting to make sense! Oddly enough, the congregation followed him. Once they got to Wisconsin, a “divine white heifer” lead them to the site of his new home which would become St. Nazianz. The community actually thrived. They titled themselves “The Association” and created an entirely functional society. Tragically, Father Oschwald became sick in 1873. Anton Still, a loyal follower, stayed with Father Osc...
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Russian soldiers, one of them wearing a WW2 German helmet, overlooking Grozny, 1999

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Russian soldiers, one of them wearing a WW2 German helmet, overlooking Grozny, 1999 Russian soldiers, one of them wearing a WW2 German helmet, overlooking Grozny, 1999. This is Second Chechen War, shot from Kirovo, near Grozny. They are not marines, just motorized infantry. Regarding the helmet, the German Nazi helmet was seen as a talisman, as a good omen sign. These soldiers’ drab-olive gear and black beanies look just like what the inappropriately used Russian “Naval Infantry” (known as MorPekh) were wearing during the First Chechen. It’s “inappropriately used” because MorPekh is meant to be used for amphibious landings and not in-land wars, but for the Chechen Wars, the Russians had to scramble every half-way combat-ready unit that they had. In the summer of 1999 the warlord Shamil Basayev and his Arab friend Al Khattab, decided to invade the Russian Federal Republic of Dagestan from the neighboring, then-independent Chechnya, in order to create some kind of a trans-Caucasian Isla...
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Russian soldiers prepare chlorine cylinders for a gas attack against German positions, 1916

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Russian soldiers prepare chlorine cylinders for a gas attack against German positions, 1916 Russian soldiers prepare chlorine cylinders for a gas attack against German positions near Ilukste, 1916. These soldiers are part of the Russian Fifth Army of World War One. They are preparing a chemical attack against the German positions in Ilukste area (modern Latvia). Chlorine gas was first introduced on the battlefield by the German Army in 1915. It was pioneered by a German scientist later to be a Nobel laureate, Fritz Haber of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, in collaboration with the German chemical conglomerate IG Farben, who developed methods for discharging chlorine gas against an entrenched enemy. It is alleged that Haber’s role (the inventor) in the use of chlorine as a deadly weapon drove his wife, Clara Immerwahr, to suicide. As described by the soldiers it had a distinctive smell of a mixture between pepper and pineapple. It also tasted metallic and stung the back of the ...
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The stilt-walking shepherds of France's grasslands, 1843-1937

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The stilt-walking shepherds of France's grasslands, 1843-1937 Until the beginning of the 20th century, stilts were actually used to make people’s lives easier and shepherds depended on them to follow their flocks with a bird’s eye view. 1936. The once-impoverished region of Landes in southwestern France consisted of very flat and marshy terrain and barely even had any roads to speak of, which made moving around somewhat problematic. To navigate the soft and unsteady heathlands, shepherds developed a unique adaptation — they traveled on stilts. Locally referred to as  tchangues , or “big legs,” the five-foot wooden stilts were strapped to a person’s legs and supplemented with a long staff which a shepherd used to direct his flock and as a support for resting. Perched comfortably atop this tripod configuration, a shepherd was afforded an elevated view to keep track of his sheep and watch for wolves. The people of Landes were trained in stilt walking from a young age, and were capabl...
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The terrifying flamethrowers of World War I through rare photographs, 1915-1918

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The terrifying flamethrowers of World War I through rare photographs, 1915-1918 French forces use flamethrowers against enemy positions. 1916. The first flamethrower, in the modern sense, is usually credited to Richard Fiedler. He submitted evaluation models of his Flammenwerfer to the German Army in 1901. The most significant model submitted was a portable device, consisting of a vertical single cylinder 4 feet (1.2 m) long, horizontally divided in two, with pressurized gas in the lower section and flammable oil in the upper section. On depressing a lever the propellant gas forced the flammable oil into and through a rubber tube and over a simple igniting wick device in a steel nozzle. The weapon projected a jet of fire and enormous clouds of smoke some 20 yards (18 m). It was a single-shot weapon—for burst firing, a new igniter section was attached each time. The English word flamethrower is a loan-translation of the German word Flammenwerfer, since the modern flamethrower was inven...
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THE BOMBING OF GUERNICA

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THE BOMBING OF GUERNICA The infamous Bombing of Guernica was an aerial attack on the town of Guernica in Basque County, Spain that took place on April 26, 1937. The attack, which lasted three hours, was carried out by the German Air Force’s Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria, at the request of the Spanish National Government during the Spanish Civil War, often refered to as “dress rehearsal” for World War II. Although modern estimates range from 153-400 civilians killed in the raid on the Spanish town, the Basque government reported 1,654 deaths and Russian records from May 1, 1937 claim 800, not including those resulting from injury or bodies which were later recovered from the rubble. Guernica suffered one of the first raids carried out by an air force on a defenseless civilian population in modern times. The bombing and its aftermath were so horrific, the event went onto inspire Picasso’s anti-war painting ‘Guernica’ and was featured in a woodcut by Ger...
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MUMMIFIED BODY OF WWII PILOT DISCOVERED 66 YEARS LATER

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WORLD WAR II MUMMIFIED BODY OF WWII PILOT DISCOVERED 66 YEARS LATER Mummified remains of Boris Lazarev On February 21, 1943, two P-40 fighters and five Hurricanes (British single-seater fighter aircraft) took off from the Soviet Military air base in Chupa on a World War II mission to halt an attack by the German Luftwaffe. WWII Hurricane One of the Hurricanes was piloted by 22-year-old Boris Alexandrovich Lazarev from the 760th IPA. During the mission, he encountered German pilot Oberfeldwebel Rudolf Muller of 6 Jagdgeschwader, 5the fighter squadron Luftwaffe (German Air Force) “Expertenstaffel” and his squad of four Bf 109G fighters. Lazarev was shot down by Muller near a railway station in Polyarnyi-Krug. His  remains were not discovered until 1998 after Jury Rybin, a military history, discovered details of the dogfight while searching through archives. A swamp nearby where Lazarev’s Hurricane was shot down was searched and the plane wreckage was discovered with the 66-year-...
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Leonard Siffleet about to be beheaded with a sword by a Japanese soldier, 1943

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Leonard Siffleet about to be beheaded with a sword by a Japanese soldier, 1943 A photograph of the Japanese soldier Yasuno Chikao an instant before he strikes off Siffleet’s head was taken from the body of a Japanese casualty later in the war, 1943. Leonard Siffleet was an Australian Special Forces radio operator, sent on a mission to Papua New Guinea to establish a coast watching station. In September 1943, his patrol was sent to Japanese-held New Guinea, to recon the Japanese forces stationed there. Siffleet and two other Australian soldiers were captured by local natives friendly to the Japanese and turned over to the Japanese. All three men were interrogated, tortured, and confined for approximately two weeks before being taken down to Aitape Beach on the afternoon of 24 October 1943. Bound and blindfolded, surrounded by Japanese and native onlookers, they were forced to the ground and executed by beheading, on the orders of Vice-Admiral Michiaki Kamada of the Imperial Japanese Na...
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