History

Iwate: ‘Village of Folktales’ Home to Modern Ventures

TONO, Iwate — Koichi Saijo reports: Partway up a hill in Tono, Iwate Prefecture, is the majestic, amazing sight of a massive rock sitting atop smaller rocks that act as a pedestal. “There’s a legend that the warrior monk Musashibo Benkei put [...]

‘Prepared to Die’: Hong Kong Protesters Embrace Hard-Core Tactics, Challenge Beijing

The resistance, which has mainstream support, is the biggest rebellion against China’s government since President Xi took power. Natasha Khan and Wenxin Fan report: This summer, the civil servant, who is in her 20s, has zip tied metal barriers [...]

Shakespeare’s Homes to be Recreated in … China?

No need to travel to England to see Shakespeare’s Birthplace and Shakespeare’s New Place as the two homes will be recreated in the People’s Republic of China. Under an exclusive cooperation agreement signed today, 28 September, by the [...]

Cheese Played a Surprisingly Important Role in Human Evolution

Ancient Egyptian cheese helps us understand when and how dairy came into our lives. Penny Bickle writes: A solid white mass found in a broken jar in an Ancient Egyptian tomb has turned out to be the world’s oldest example of solid cheese. Probably [...]

‘Japanese Satchmo’ Yoshio Toyama Honored in Birthplace of Jazz

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Trumpeter Yoshio Toyama and his wife Keiko moved to the United States 50 years ago to learn about traditional jazz in its birthplace, New Orleans. Nightclubs, churches, house parties, and jazz funerals became their classroom. [...]

Buried by the Ash of Vesuvius, These Scrolls Are Being Read for the First Time in Millennia

A revolutionary American scientist is using subatomic physics to decipher 2,000-year-old texts from the early days of Western civilization. By Jo Marchant, Photographs by Henrik Knudsen: It’s July 12, 2017, and Jens Dopke walks into a windowless [...]

French Researchers Confirm, After Study of Hitler’s Teeth, that He Definitely Died in 1945

PARIS –Adolf Hitler definitely died in 1945 in Berlin, from taking cyanide and a bullet, according to French researchers who were given rare access to fragments of the dictator’s teeth held in Moscow. “The teeth are authentic, there is no [...]

Last Known Person Born in the 19th Century Dies in Japan at Age of 117

The world’s oldest person, a 117-year-old Japanese woman, has died. Nabi Tajima died of old age in a hospital Saturday evening in the town of Kikai in southern Japan, town official Susumu Yoshiyuki confirmed. She had been hospitalized since [...]

Photos of Kim Jong Un’s mother from 1973 Japan visit discovered

TOKYO — Photos of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s mother, Ko Yong Hui, taken when she visited Japan in 1973, have been found. A figure who interacted with Ko at the time has retained the photos taken when Ko visited Japan from July to [...]

Titanic Food Menus For 1st, 2nd and 3rd Class Passengers

The Titanic sank almost 104 years ago to the day, but while many things have changed in the world over the last century, one thing remains the same: the contrast between first class and economy. Passengers on the Ship of Dreams were divided into [...]

Japan Activates First Marines Since WW2 to Bolster Defenses Against China

SASEBO/TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) – Nobuhiro Kubo and Tim Kelly report: Japan on Saturday activated its first marine unit since World War Two trained to counter invaders occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea that [...]

‘Wild Wild Country’: Most Shocking Reveals From the Sex Cult’s FBI Informant

David Berry Knapp, aka Swami Krishna Deva, the former mayor of Rajneeshpuram, famously flipped on the cult. And his FBI testimony was eye-opening and very disturbing. Netflix’s Wild Wild Country is, so far, the must-see television event of 2018. [...]

Fossils of ‘Badass’ Argentine Meat-Eating Dinosaur Unearthed

On a semiarid Patagonian landscape 85 million years ago, a formidable meat-eater called Tratayenia rosalesi reigned as the apex predator, part of an enigmatic dinosaur group that menaced South America and Australia for tens of millions of years. [...]

Xi’s Power Grab Shatters Hope for Liberalization of China

Xi is now poised to rule for as long as he wants as China’s most powerful leader since Mao. BEIJING (AP) — When American scholar Orville Schell first visited China in 1975, Mao Zedong was leading the country through the tumultuous Cultural [...]

Raytheon will showcase disruptive technologies that are changing warfare at the 2017 Paris Air Show (Credit: Raytheon)

Over 85% say Japan at Risk of Going to War Again

Only 10.7 percent of the respondents said they saw little or no risk of Japan being involved in war. KYODO – The results of a government survey released Saturday showed 85.5 percent of Japanese polled think Japan is at risk of getting involved [...]

How Killer Rice Crippled Tokyo and the Japanese Navy

One stubborn doctor pioneered a cure. Anne Ewbank writes: In 1877, Japan’s Meiji Emperor watched his aunt, the princess Kazu, die of a common malady: kakke. If her condition was typical, her legs would have swollen, and her speech slowed. Numbness [...]

On the Adulteration of Japan’s Oldest Religion

Michael Hoffman writes: Primitive Shinto is one of the loveliest religions in the world. It’s beautiful in its simplicity — defenseless too, as it proved, against the nativists and nationalists who warped it into 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century [...]

Hong Kong: How a 1,000-Pound WWII Bomb was Pulled Out of the Ground Without Exploding

Alex Horton reports: Police and explosive ordnance disposal technicians removed a 1,000-pound bomb that failed to explode during World War II but that successfully brought traffic to a standstill Wednesday in a bustling Hong Kong neighborhood. It [...]

[VIDEO] How a Steel Box Changed the World: A Brief History of Shipping

As the container shipping industry continues to boom, companies are adopting new technologies to move cargo faster and shifting to crewless ships. But it’s not all been smooth sailing and the future will see fewer players stay above water. via WSJ [...]

Surveillance State: How China Uses Technology to Curtail Freedom

Xi Jinping’s socialist-capitalist model is little more than an autocracy relying on technology to curtail civil liberty and economic freedom. Therese Shaheen writes: In early January, the Treasury-led Committee on Foreign Investment in the [...]

Communist Purge Plays Out in Vietnam’s Trial of the Decade

James Hooky reports: The disappearance of a former Vietnamese official in Berlin last summer gave the outside world an early glimpse into an anticorruption drive captivating communist-run Vietnam. Germany said Vietnamese agents kidnapped Trinh Xuan [...]

Record of ‘Japanese Slave’ Found in Spain

The will of a Japanese man who went overseas as a slave on the same boat as the 16th-century Tensho Embassy to Europe (see below) has been found in Spain. Lucio de Sousa, a specially appointed associate professor of Age of Discovery history at the [...]