Page 8 - History Facts

An NBA player tried to warn the US about Osama bin Laden, but his pleas weren't heard!

Manute Bol was a Sudanese basketball player who played on four NBA teams. He was a center with a height of seven feet seven inches. He actually comes from a long line of tall people with his great grandpa being even taller than he was at seven feet ten inches. Bol was very active in charitable causes throughout his career.

In fact, he said he spent much of the money he made during a 10-year NBA career supporting various causes related to the war-ravaged nation of his birth, Sudan. He frequently visited Sudanese refugee camps, where he was treated like royalty. In 2001 Bol was offered a post as minister of sport by the Sudanese government. Bol, who was a Christian, refused because one of the pre-conditions was converting to Islam.

Later Bol was hindered from leaving the country by the Sudanese government, who accused him of supporting the Dinka-led Christian rebels, the Sudan People's Liberation Army. The Sudanese government refused to grant him an exit visa unless he came back with more money. Assistance by supporters in the United States, including Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, raised money to provide Bol with plane tickets to Cairo, Egypt.

After 6 months of negotiations with U.S. Consulate officials regarding refugee status, Bol and his family were finally able to leave Egypt and return to the United States. In the 1990s, Bol tried to warn the US, which included visiting the Pentagon, meeting with 58 members of Congress, and the State Department, of the rising threat of Islamic fundamentalism generally and of Osama bin Laden, specifically, who had been given safe-haven by the Sudanese government in the early-mid 1990s. He said that his concerns were dismissed.

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Russia gave the United States a teardrop memorial for the victims of 9/11!

While the attacks of September 11, 2001 devastated the United States and much of the world, it also served to bring our country together. Other countries also reached out the US in our time of need, proving the resilience of the human race and the extent of human sympathy.

Russia actually gave the United States a gift to memorialize the victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The gift was a sculpture called “To the Struggle Against World Terrorism” and is also known as “The Tear of Grief.” It was made by Zurab Tsereteli.

The Tear of Grief is a 100-foot tower of steel coated in bronze. A jagged hole runs through the center of it, and a 40-foot metal teardrop hangs from the top of this hole. The tower’s granite base is etched with the names of those who lost their lives in the September 11th attacks and in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The sculpture stands at the end of the former Military Ocean Terminal in Bayonne, New Jersey. In September 2011, a four-foot section of steel from the World Trade Center was placed adjacent to the monument.

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President Eisenhower predicted Holocaust Deniers, so he ordered pictures be taken of concentration camps!

The Holocaust during WWII was one of the very low points in human history. Millions of Jews were systematically exterminated in concentration camps. These are the fats, and yet some still try to deny that the Holocaust ever happened. Whatever their reasoning, they maintain the stories are Nazi propaganda.

Showing great foresight, Dwight Eisenhower made an effort to stop any such attempts. In 1945, he visited one of the concentration camps near Gotha, and was shocked and horrified at what he saw. Though some of the sights made him physically ill, he inspected every part of the camps. He felt that it was his duty to see it all and be able to testify to the truth of the Nazi brutality.

In order to document these horrors and make sure that cynics and doubters would not brush off the evidence as mere Nazi propaganda, he ordered many photographs taken and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps. He also contacted both London and Washington and urged both governments to send a random group of newspaper editors and legislative groups to the camps to document them.

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Hitler's family name would have been Schicklgruber. His dad changed it in 1877!

Adolf Hitler's family tree is complicated. You will notice that the last name "Hitler" had many variations that were often used almost interchangeably. Some of the common variances were Hitler, Hiedler, Hüttler, Hytler, and Hittler. Alois Schicklgruber did change his name on January 7, 1877 to "Hitler," which was the only form of the last name that his son, Adolf, used.

The family tree is filled with multiple marriages. Look carefully at the marriage dates and the birth dates of their children. Many children were born illegitimately or born only a couple months after marriage. Although the graph shows Johann Georg Hiedler as Alois Schicklgruber's father, this is a contested issue. Hitler had a living sister.

We often think of him as a loner, but his sister Paula survived him. Also, Alois Schicklgruber's first wife has not been included. He married Anna Glassl-Hörer in October 1873. Anna became an invalid soon after the marriage, in 1880 she filed for a separation, and she died three years later. Alois and Anna had no children together.

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The first person to fly over the North Pole actually missed it!

Richard Byrd gained renown 87 years ago by becoming the first person to fly over the North Pole. However, it is now being reported that he missed it by as much as 80 miles.

A first clue was that the flight was supposed to take 18 hours, but only took him 15 hours and 44 minutes. The man also didn't have a written down flight plan. Byrd is said to have relied on a solar compass, a tiny barograph and measured speed with a stopwatch.

However, it is possible that Byrd saw the North Pole, given that his altitude gave him 90-mile visibility. However, the real record holder for being the first to fly over the North Pole goes to a Norwegian who accomplished the feat days after Byrd.

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