Current info

Meet Chester W. Nimitz, The Seasick Admiral Who Defeated The Japanese Navy In World War II "Tell Nimitz ​​to get the hell out to Pearl and stay there till the war is won."  When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Chester Nimitz was in Washington, D.C., serving as head of the Navy's Bureau of Navigation. But just 10 days later, President Roosevelt fired the former head of the Pacific Fleet for his failure to prevent the attack and promoted Nimitz, sending him to Hawaii in civilian clothes and carrying classified damage reports hidden in his wife's sewing bag to avoid the detection of potential spies.  With most of the Pacific Fleet destroyed and no functional battleships, the Navy was vastly outgunned by Japan. But Nimitz quickly consolidated the remaining fleet including aircraft carriers and pivoted to fighting naval battles in the skies while awaiting the construction of new battleships.  And within just six months, he'd won two decisive battles th...

Miracle in Kogi as  7-Year-Old Boy Escapes Death After Being Buried Alive By Stepbrother In what has been described as miraculous, a a 7-year-old boy, Friday Oshodi, escaped death by whiskers after being buried alive by his stepbrother, Goodnews Oshodi, for allegedly stealing N10,000.  THISDAY learnt that the incident occurred on  Tuesday evening at Apamisede Community, in Adavi local government area of the Kogi State, It was gathered that the boy was however lucky as good Samaritans exhumed him alive. Investigation revealed the  the stepmother of the boy directed her eldest son to punish him for stealing N10,000 The eyewitness account explained that the elder brother in executing the directive of his mother first of all beat the boy so much that he almost lost his two eyes, he then decided to bury him alive but was rescued by neighbours. When he was asked why he decided to bury his brother alive, he said that he was only carrying out the instructions of their mother...

Brazil: Few women attend Rio topless ban protest A protest in Brazil against a decades-old ban on topless sunbathing has failed to attract more than a dozen women. Instead, hundreds of photographers and men turned up for the event on Rio de Janeiro's Ipanema beach. More than 2,000 women had said they would take their tops off on the beach on Saturday morning to call for the law to be scrapped. Organisers say most women probably felt too intimidated to join the protest.Protesters say Brazilian legislation, which defines beach topless as an obscene act, is anachronistic and hypocritical.The few women who went ahead with the topless protest were outnumbered by journalists and male beach-goers They argue that nudity is tolerated during the annual carnival parade in Rio. "It's a false-Puritanism and indicative of our macho culture that we have a law forbidding that a woman can go topless," Olga Salon told the Associated Press news agency. She was one of the few women who w...

Naked punishment: woman jailed for 8 months in China for stripping husband’s  mistress and parading her through streets nude as friends beat her up Wife and 3 friends beat woman, tear off her clothes, sprinkle pepper on her body and force her through crowds Incident viewed 120 million times on Weibo alone as some ask why husband was not punished instead A woman who took revenge on her husband’s lover by stripping her naked and parading her through the streets, has been sentenced to eight months in prison. A court in Jiang county in southwestern Guizhou province found the wife, surnamed Xu, guilty after she humiliated the woman said to be the mistress of her cheating husband. Xu told how, last year, neighbours had alerted her to the alleged infidelity, so she began following her spouse. In November, Xu saw her husband enter a flat and stay there for some time. Assuming there was a woman in there, she called three female friends for backup.The four women barged into the home, where t...

Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium Despite the pain, millions of Chinese women stood firm in their devotion to the tradition For the past year I have been working with Britain’s BBC television to make a documentary series on the history of women. In the latest round of filming there was an incident that haunts me. It took place during a segment on the social changes that affected Chinese women in the late 13th century. These changes can be illustrated by the practice of female foot-binding. Some early evidence for it comes from the tomb of Lady Huang Sheng, the wife of an imperial clansman, who died in 1243. Archaeologists discovered tiny, misshapen feet that had been wrapped in gauze and placed inside specially shaped “lotus shoes.” For one of my pieces on camera, I balanced a pair of embroidered doll shoes in the palm of my hand, as I talked about Lady Huang and the origins of foot-binding. When it was over, I turned to the museum curator who had given me the shoes a...

Court rules against woman who became face of China’s #MeToo movement in landmark verdict Mr Zhu was accused of forcibly groping and kissing Zhou Xiaoxuan while she was an intern at state broadcaster CCTV in 2014. Through a series of social media posts in 2018, Ms Zhou levelled  allegations of sexual harassment against Mr Zhu. He has denied all the allegations.Her accusations took Chinese social media by storm, prompting other women to come forward with their own accounts of sexual harassment. Ms Zhou, popularly known by her online name Xianzi, quickly became the face of the country’s #MeToo movement, sparking a nationwide debate. Ms Zhou filed a lawsuit against Mr Zhu three years ago, seeking a public apology and damages of 50,000 yuan (about £5,600). But the first hearing in the case was held only in December 2020, and that too behind closed doors. The second hearing on Tuesday was also behind closed doors.The Haidian district court on Tuesday dismissed the case and said the evide...

Vince Speranza’s Epic Beer Run During the Siege of Bastogne The Siege of Bastogne was one of the most crucial fights of World War II, and it came amid the largest battle the U.S. Army has ever fought – the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans caught the Americans by  surprise on Dec. 16, 1944, mustering more than 400,000 men, 550 tanks, and hundreds of other vehicles for one last offensive. The goal was to push the Allies back toward the sea and recapture the critical port of Antwerp.  The Siege of Bastogne: Defending Against the German Forces    German forces overwhelmed American defenses as they poured through the Ardennes Forest, forcing the retreat of tens of thousands of shocked American soldiers. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower knew his supply lines were already thin, a blizzard negated Allied air superiority and the Ardennes area was full of green and exhausted troops – some who had been fighting since D-Day. Eisenhower declared that holding the Belgian city of Bastogne...

Chinese bride-to-be strips naked on street after fiancé cheats before wedding A Chinese bride-to-be stripped naked in the middle of a busy street after she discovered her fiancé was cheating on her before the couple’s wedding. The incident went viral on Chinese social media. The eye-catching incident took place on Monday, April 17, in Jiangsu province, China.Passersby looked on surprised, alarmed and bewildered as they saw the young woman standing in the street, completely exposed. She appeared to be highly distressed, bewildered and unable to control her actions and words. The story behind this woman’s extreme action is heart-wrenching. She had been in a loving relationship with her alleged cheating fiancé for several years, and the two were planning to get married with the blessings of both families. The wedding was scheduled to take place on Saturday, May 1.However, just days before the big event, the young woman accidentally discovered that her fiancé had been having an affair with...

LIZ JONES: The world's most famous women are utterly desperate . Their belief they have to be naked to be noticed is driven by fear It is billed as the Oscars of the fashion world. The annual red carpet Met Ball takes place on the first Monday in May inside New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art (though on the strength of the photos here, it should be renamed the Metropolitan Museum of A**e), hosted by American Vogue's global editor-in-chiefIt is meant to be a showcase for creativity. It is meant to demonstrate how the fashion industry really is a great art form, which these days is wholly inclusive of different shapes, races, genders and ages. Its purpose is to raise funds, ostensibly from its $350,000 (£279,000) per table-of-ten ticket sales, for the museum's work (though I do wonder whether the biggest stars stump up a bean) and to that end, sets its invitees a different theme each year on which to base their outfits. This time, it was florals. What's not to love ...

Children killed in post-election protests The funeral of 16-year-old Antonio Juaqim,  who was fatally shot during protests against last month’s presidential election, has brought the simmering crisis in Mozambique into stark focus. Antonio was among those killed during the first night of demonstrations, with Human Rights Watch reporting that at least 40 people, including 10 children, have died in the crackdown by police. Friends and family gathered at São Francisco Xavier Cemetery in Maputo, their grief pointing to the escalating violence that has claimed dozens of lives, including many children. “Antonio was shot in the mouth, and the bullet went through the back of his head,” said his uncle, Manuel Samuel, who described CCTV footage allegedly showing police firing at protesters. The protests were sparked by the re-election of Frelimo’s presidential candidate, Daniel Chapo, with 71% of the vote. Opposition leader Venâncio Mondlane, who secured 20% of the vote, has rejected the res...

Woman’s sex act in China IKEA store condemned and prompts security upgrade IKEA has condemned the actions of a woman who gave the DIY trend new meaning while checking out beds and sofas in a store showroom. The homeware and flat-pack company has been forced to tighten security in its stores in China after pornographic footage showed the woman pleasuring herself in a furniture showroom, The Daily Mail reported. The clip shows a half-naked woman performing the sex act on beds and sofas while people in the background continue shopping, oblivious to her actions. Censors have removed the explicit video from Chinese social media, but IKEA’s response to the clip is attracting its own following with more than 9 million views. “We resolutely oppose and condemn this kind of behaviour, and immediately reported it to the police in the city of the suspected store,” IKEA said in a statement, without revealing the location of the store.The company said it would take “even more careful security and pu...

Naked people will be biking around Toronto on Saturday. Here’s why they’ve been doing it for 20 years The clothing-optional ride has been generating strange looks for two decades. It’s still going strong. On Saturday, Sean O’Rourke will participate in the Toronto naked bike ride for the first time. The 63-year-old from Oakville has cerebral palsy and will be riding in his powered wheelchair. “I want to show people that people with disabilities are no different from anybody else,” O’Rourke said in an email. It’s one of the many reasons why hundreds of people will be biking around the city naked this weekend. Advocating for reduced oil consumption, improved bike safety and increased body positivity, riders will traverse a nearly three-hour loop along some of Toronto’s busiest streets while baring it all for the ride’s 20th anniversary. Organizer Gene Dare expects more than the 220 people who took part in last year’s event, although most participants only ride once. The ride will begin at...

From family to factory: women's lives during the Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution saw thousands of women enter the workplace alongside men – but it was far from emancipatory, writes Elinor Evans The Industrial Revolution caused a dramatic shift in women’s roles in society. Before industrialisation, the household would have been the centre of production, and women’s work largely confined to the domestic sphere, but no less physical for it. Tasks such as fetching water, and tending livestock would have kept women as busy as clothing and feeding a family, while many also took other work into their home such as hand-spinning or weaving. Cottage industry, as it was called, didn’t entirely end with the arrival of large- scale manufacturing, but the advent of machinery had an irreversible impact on women’s lives. As machines replaced individual labour and burgeoning industries needed coal, women became part of the growing working classes that laboured in mines and mills. In...

From 1971: Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? A version of this story originally appeared in the January 1971 issue of ARTnews. While the recent upsurge of feminist activity in this country has indeed been a liberating one, its force has been chiefly emotional—personal, psychological and subjective—centered, like the other radical movements to which it is related, on the present and its immediate needs, rather than on historical analysis of the basic intellectual issues which the feminist attack on the status quo automatically raises.1 Like any revolution, however, the feminist one ultimately must come to grips with the intellectual and ideological basis of the various intellectual or scholarly disciplines—history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, etc.—in the same way that it questions the ideologies of present social institutions. If, as John Stuart Mill suggested, we tend to accept whatever is as natural, this is just as true in the realm of academic investig...