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The Battle of Khe Sanh was conducted in northwestern Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam between January 21 and April 8, 1968 during the Vietnam War. The combatants were elements of the United States III Marine Amphibious force, elements of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), and two to three division-size elements of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

The American command in Saigon initially believed that combat operations around Khe Sanh during the summer of 1967 were just part of a series of minor North Vietnamese offensives in the border regions. That appraisal was altered when it was discovered that PAVN was moving major forces into the area during the fall and winter. A build-up of Marine forces took place and actions around Khe Sanh commenced when the Marine base was isolated.

During a series of desperate actions that lasted 77 days, Khe Sanh Combat Base and the hilltop outposts around it were under constant North Vietnamese ground, artillery, mortar, and rocket attacks. During the battle, a massive aerial bombardment campaign was launched by the U.S. Air Force to support the Marine base. In March 1968, an overland relief expedition was launched by a combined Marine/Army/South Vietnamese task force that eventually broke through to the Marines at Khe Sanh.

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The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Raping of Nanking, was an infamous war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing, then the capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army. The duration of the massacre is not clearly defined, although the violence lasted well into the next six weeks.

Japanese officials lied about civilian death figures and still refuse to reveal them properly today. During the occupation of Nanking, the Japanese Army committed numerous atrocities, such as rape, looting, arson, and the execution of prisoners of war and civilians. The executions began under the pretext of eliminating Chinese soldiers disguised as civilians. A large number of women and children were also killed. Most bodies were bound with their hands tied behind their backs.

The total number of civilians and prisoners of war murdered in Nanking and its vicinity during the first six weeks of the Japanese occupation was over 200,000. These figures do not take into account those persons whose bodies were destroyed by burning or by throwing them into the Yangtze River. In addition to the number of victims, some Japanese nationalists have even disputed whether the atrocities ever happened even though the Japanese government has acknowledged that the incident did occur.

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The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal took place from November 12, 1941 to November 15, 1942 and was the decisive engagement in a series of naval battles between Allied and Imperial Japanese forces during the months-long Guadalcanal campaign in the Solomon Islands. The action consisted of combined air and sea engagements over four days and related to a Japanese effort to reinforce land forces on the island.

Allied forces had landed on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942 and seized an airfield that was under construction by the Japanese military. Several subsequent attempts by the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy to recapture the airfield failed. In early November 1942, the Japanese organized a transport convoy in an attempt to once again retake the airfield.

To allow the convoy to approach the island and deliver its cargo, the Japanese navy sent several warship forces to bombard the airfield. U.S. forces intercepted the Japanese convoy and warships with aircraft and warship attacks. In the resulting battle, both sides lost numerous warships in two extremely destructive nighttime surface engagements, with the U.S. suffering more warships sunk. However, the U.S. was successful in turning back attempts by the Japanese to bombard the airfield.

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The Great Kanto earthquake struck the Kanto plain on the Japanese main island of Honshu on the morning of September 1. According to various accounts, the duration of the quake was between four and ten minutes. It was estimated to have had a magnitude between 7.9 and 8.4 on the Richter scale with its focus deep beneath Izu Oshima Island in Sagami Bay.

The quake devastated Tokyo, the port city of Yokohoma, surrounding prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, and Shizuoka, and caused widespread damage throughout the Kanto region. The power and intensity of the earthquake managed to move the 93-ton Buddha at Kamakura almost two feet. Casualty estimates range from about 100,000 to 142,000 deaths with the latter figure including approximately 37,000 people who went missing and were presumed dead. The quake struck at lunch time when people were using fire to cook food and the damage and the number of fatalities were augmented due to fires which broke out in numerous locations.

The fires spread rapidly due to high winds from a nearby typhoon off the coast of Noto Peninsula in Northern Japan and some developed into firestorms which swept across cities. The Imperial Palace caught fire, but the Prince Regent was unharmed. Numerous homes in mountainous areas and hilly coastal areas in western Kangawa were buried or swept away by landsides but the fires were the biggest causes of death.

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The atomic bombing of Hiroshima was a nuclear attack at the end of World War II against the Empire of Japan by the United States at the order of U.S. President Harry S. Truman. After six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities, the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped on Monday, August 6, 1945. The bomb killed as many as 140,000 people. Since then, thousands more have died from injuries or illness attributed to exposure to radiation released by the bomb.

On May 10-11, 1945, the Target Committee at Los Alamos, recommended Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, and Kokura as possible targets. The criteria included targets larger than three miles in diameter and in a large urban area; the blast would create effective damage; and were unlikely to be attacked by August 1945. Hiroshima was described as “an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area.” The goal of the weapon was to convince Japan to surrender unconditionally.

August 6 was chosen because there had previously been cloud cover over the target. The 393rd Bombardment Squadron B-29 Enola Gay was launched from the West Pacific. The release of the bomb was uneventful. The gravity bomb known as “Little Boy’ took 57 seconds to fall from the aircraft to the predetermined detonation height above the city. It created a blast equivalent to about 13 kilotons of TNT. The radius of total destruction was about one mile.

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The “Goddess of Democracy” was a ten meter high statue created during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. The statue was constructed in only four days out of Styrofoam and paper-Mache over a metal armature by students of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. The students made the statue as large as possible so that the government would be unable to dismantle it, forcing them to either destroy it or leave it standing.

The students began building the statue on May 27 at their university. It was built in the hopes that it would be invigorate the movement which was perceived to be losing some of its momentum. The students were influenced by the work of Russian sculptor Vera Mukhina, associated with the school of revolutionary realism.

When the State Security Bureau heard that the students planned to transport pieces of the statue to the Square, they declared that any truck drivers helping them would lose their licenses. The students hired six Beijing carts and leaked false information to throw off the authorities. It worked and at dusk on May 29, with fewer than 10,000 protesters remaining in the Square, the students began assembling the statue. By the early morning of May 30, the statue was fully assembled in Tiananmen Square and unveiled to as many as 300,000 spectators.

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