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February 4, 1974 saw the abduction of 19-year-old Hearst from her Berkeley residence. The perpetrators, a small leftist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), seized this opportunity as Hearst lived close to their hideout. Testimony during the trial revealed their aim: to use Hearst's family's political clout to secure the release of SLA members Russ Little and Joe Remiro, arrested for the murder of Marcus Foster, superintendent of Oakland public schools, in November 1973. Patty Hearst’s booking photo following her arrest in San Francisco. September 19, 1975. In the space of just a few months, Hearst a hugely wealthy woman from a famous publishing family was abducted, converted to revolutionary Maoism, started making videos denouncing her own father as a pig and then joined her comrades in a series of violent bank robberies. Later, when a third of her fellow revolutionaries died in a shootout with police on live TV, the manhunt for Patty Hearst occupied daily media coverage and finally ended with “Comrade Tania,” as she now called herself, being captured and charged for her crimes. The Revolutionaries Of The Symbionese Liberation Army An F.B.I. wanted poster provides information about several Symbionese Liberation Army members, including Patty Hearst. In 1973, a small group of young, radical, self-proclaimed anti-fascists in California founded the Symbionese Liberation Army (the group had existed in a nascent form since 1971, according to some ). Most were former Berkeley students like Nancy Ling, who came from an upper-middle-class family in San Francisco and got an English degree in 1967. In 1973, she was working at an orange juice stand on the Berkeley campus. Camilla Hall was a social worker from Minnesota who had quit her job and moved to Berkeley, where she lived off her family’s trust fund and wrote radical poetry as well as created line drawings that she tried to sell on the street. Another typical member of the group was Willie Wolfe, the son of an anesthesiologist from Connecticut who had graduated from a Massachusetts prep school in 1969 and went to Berkeley to study anthropology. While visiting prison inmates for a class, Wolfe, who had started calling himself Cujo, met a radical black bank robber named Donald DeFreeze, who would soon become the leader of the fledgling S.L.A. Calling himself “General Marshall Cinque Mtume,” DeFreeze escaped from Soledad State Prison on March 5, 1973 by just walking away from a work detail and entering his new friends’ network of safe houses, where they sheltered him from police while he wrote various manifestos and designed the S.L.A.’s seven-headed cobra symbol. Those manifestos and other assorted writings offered little in the way of a clear mission statement. “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people,” read one communique widely offered up as the group’s motto. Otherwise, according to The New York Times , the group’s “splintered rhetoric on cultural, racial and sexual oppression was nearly random.” Whatever the purported philosophy of the Symbionese Liberation Army, their actions under DeFreeze turned violent starting in 1973, when they killed Marcus Foster, Oakland’s first black school superintendent, for his “fascist” support of making schoolchildren in the district carry ID cards. In fact, Foster opposed the ID card plan, which the S.L.A. presumably didn’t know when they shot him eight times with hollow-point .45-caliber bullets they had filled up with cyanide beforehand. That killing had other radicals in the area wondering what the S.L.A. was thinking. By the end of 1973, with the Foster killing still in the papers, the S.L.A. decided to really grab some headlines by kidnapping Patty Hearst, famed heiress to the fortune of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, from her apartment. Patty Hearst, The Heiress Patty Hearst, not long before her kidnapping. Circa 1973. In 1973, Patty Hearst was mainly famous for being famous and occasionally appeared in the society section of the San Francisco Chronicle . While attending a Bay Area Catholic school, she reportedly lied to the nuns about her mother having cancer to get out of exams. According to a psychologist who later testified at her trial, she experimented with sex and drugs at an early age. In 1973, still just 18 and living on her own in an apartment a few blocks away from the Symbionese Liberation Army’s hangout and studying art history at Berkeley, Patty Hearst paid a visit to Soledad State Prison, where, according to a private investigator hired after the kidnapping, she visited Donald DeFreeze, the soon-to-be General Field Marshall of the S.L.A. Nobody knows how Hearst came to know DeFreeze or what they talked about when they met (though prison staff unaccountably allowed DeFreeze virtually unlimited conjugal visits with women he wasn’t married to, a violation of the rules that were then in place), but the pair would soon make headlines across the country. Patty Hearst and Steven Weed, not long before her kidnapping. Circa 1973. Patty Hearst Is Kidnapped A few months before her February 4, 1974 kidnapping, Patty Hearst was written up in the local papers when her family announced her engagement to her reedy 51-year-old tutor Steven Weed. They were together in her apartment, Hearst wearing only a nightgown, when a group of three Symbionese Liberation Army members burst through her door and grabbed her. One of the kidnappers grabbed a bottle of wine that Hearst had been sharing with Weed and smashed it across his head, knocking him out. The group then bundled Hearst into the trunk of a waiting car, fired several rounds into the apartment building, and sped off. Eight days later, the S.L.A. released a statement threatening to execute their “prisoner of war” and demanding the release of Russel Little, one of the group’s founders, who was then sitting in jail for the murder of the school superintendent. It was this letter that ended with the phrase that has widely come to define the group: “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people.” The exterior of the San Francisco house where Patty Hearst was initially held captive by the Symbionese Liberation Army. At the time of her abduction, Patty Hearst was an affluent white woman who was seized in the most dramatic way a politically radical group of humanities students could arrange. Naturally, the incident was an instant hit with the media, which devoted acres of print to developments in the case and biographies of every known member of the Symbionese Liberation Army. According to her own later accounts , Patty Hearst spent much of her time locked in a closet at the S.L.A. safe house, where she was subjected to Maoist consciousness-raising sessions and repeatedly raped by various members of the group. With Patty Hearst captive, the Symbionese Liberation Army used its newfound notoriety to the fullest. Right after the kidnapping, when Donald DeFreeze put out the statement demanding the release of Russel Little, the S.L.A. also demanded that Hearst’s rich father pay $70 to every needy person in California in the form of free groceries. Randolph Hearst, Patty Hearst’s father, immediately took out a $2 million loan and gave the money to a group he hastily founded, People in Need. His good intentions came to grief, however, and the program to give away food had to be shut down when needy people looted the giveaway operation in West Oakland and started a riot that sent several people to the hospital. Patty Hearst poses with a machine gun in front of a Symbionese Liberation Army flag in a photo sent by her captors to the media, along with a recording in which she appeared to pledge her allegiance to the group, several weeks after her capture. Comrade Tania At various points, Patty Hearst made audio recordings that were then released to the media . The first two, made on days nine and 13 of her captivity, were of the usual “I’m okay, but do what they want” variety. Then, on day 34, after the riot and suspension of the food giveaway, the tone shifted. This is a transcript of that third recording: Mom, Dad. I’ve been hearing reports about the food program. So far it sounds like you and your advisors have managed to turn it into a real disaster. You said that it was out of your hands, what you should have said was that you wash your hands of it. It sounds like most of the food is low quality. No one received any beef or lamb. Anyway, it certainly didn’t sound like the kind of food our family is used to eating. Honest criticism, perhaps, but then, on day 59, she recorded this: Mom, Dad. Tell the poor and oppressed people of this nation what the corporate state is about to do. Warn black and poor people that they are about to be murdered down to the last man, woman, and child. Tell the people that the energy crisis is nothing more than a means to get public approval for a massive program to build nuclear power plants all over the nation… I have been given the choice of one: being released in a safe area, or two: joining the forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army and fighting for my freedom and the freedom of all oppressed people. I have chosen to stay and fight. I have been given the name Tania after a comrade who fought alongside Che in Bolivia. It is in the spirit of Tania that I say: ‘Patria o Muerte, Venceremos.’ As if to dispel any doubts about whether she was serious, on April 15, “Comrade Tania” was caught on CCTV waving a gun around and guarding hostages during an S.L.A. bank robbery. When general bungling led to shots being fired, leaving one person dead and another injured, the group fled the bank and disappeared, taking $10,692 with them. Then the authorities received this message: Greetings to the people, this is Tania. Our actions of April 15 forced the Corporate State to help finance the revolution. As for being brainwashed, the idea is ridiculous beyond belief. I am a soldier in the People’s Army. The End Of The Symbionese Liberation Army The end of the Symbionese Liberation Army began a month after the bank robbery, when Patty Hearst, now known as “Tania,” accompanied a couple other members to Mel’s Sporting Goods Store in Los Angeles. As S.L.A. members William Harris and his wife Emily were about to pay for their supplies and leave, Harris tried shoplifting an ammunition case. When the pair were confronted by store security, they forced their way to the front of the store, where Hearst pulled a gun and shot up the store’s sign. The Symbionese Liberation Army house burns in the course of the confrontation with police on May 17, 1974. That got the L.A.P.D.’s attention, and they put out an APB for the van that the S.L.A. members fled in. That van was later spotted in front of a small house on 54th St., which was immediately surrounded by hundreds of police officers. Over the next several hours, more than 9,000 rounds of ammunition crossed each other in the air as the S.L.A. and L.A.P.D. traded gunfire , while residents fled the now-blocked-off neighbourhood and half the country tuned in to the local news, which broadcast the event live. As the siege went on, one member of the S.L.A. was fatally wounded by a shot through the wall and two more were killed as they tried to flee out the back. When police fired scores of gunpowder-actuated tear gas canisters through the window, starting a massive fire that quickly engulfed the whole place, General Marshall Cinque Mtume of the People’s Symbionese Liberation Army led his two surviving followers into a crawlspace under the house. Their corpses were later found with their gas masks melted to their faces. Through it all, the only question anybody cared about, and the one that the media kept bringing up, was whether or not Patty Hearst was in the house. As it happens, she wasn’t. She had separated from the rest of her group and gone to a different safe house and watched the siege on TV like everybody else. After it was over, and all six S.L.A. members’ deaths were confirmed, Comrade Tania released her last public statement as an urban revolutionary: Greetings to the people. This is Tania. I want to talk about the way I knew our six murdered comrades because the fascist pig media have of course been painting a typically distorted picture of these beautiful sisters and brothers. Cinque was in a race with time believing that every minute must be another step forward in the fight to save the children. Gelina was beautiful. She taught me how to fight the enemy within through her constant struggle with bourgeois conditioning. Gabi crouched low with her ass to the ground. She practiced until her shotgun was an extension of her right and left arms. Zoya, female guerrilla. Perfect love and perfect hate reflected in stone cold eyes. Fahizah taught me to shoot first and make sure the pig is dead before splitting. She was wise and bad. Cujo was the gentlest, most beautiful man I’ve ever known. He taught me the truth as he learned it from the beautiful brothers in California’s concentration camps [That would be the California Department of Corrections, where convicted felons go after getting a jury trial – ed.]. Neither Cujo or I had ever loved an individual the way we loved each other. Our relationships foundation was our commitment to the struggle and our love for the People. I died in that fire on 54th Street, but out of the ashes I was reborn. I know what I have to do. What Patty Hearst had to do, apparently, was rob another bank, in Sacramento, where more careless gunplay (by a different S.L.A. member, not Hearst) got a 42-year-old woman making a deposit for her church shot in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun. Authorities followed a trail that eventually led them to Hearst’s apartment in the Mission District in San Francisco, where she was arrested in September 1975, 17 months after the kidnapping. Patty Hearst leaves San Mateo County Jail in Redwood City, bound for her appearance in Federal Court in San Francisco Sept. 19, 1975. Patty Hearst On Trial When she was booked, Patty Hearst gave her occupation as “urban guerrilla.” While her parents spent whatever was necessary to hire investigators, psychologists, and F. Lee Bailey as her defence counsel, a defiant Hearst refused to cooperate with the investigation or to speak with her “pig fascist” family. However, with serious charges and likely prison time ahead of her, she underwent a rapid deconversion and renounced as rapists and brainwashers the people she had described with words and phrases like “wise” and “the gentlest, most beautiful man I’ve ever known” (in reference to William Wolfe, who she later claimed had raped her). In analyses that were hotly contested, assorted psychologists and experts found that Hearst was experiencing various kinds of mental trauma and that she may have been “brainwashed” to some degree (this is also known as “Stockholm syndrome”). To what extent Patty Hearst was a perpetrator or a victim has remained in debate ever since . The judge in the case was less than sympathetic to claims of brainwashing, given that Hearst hadn’t been in custody for more than six weeks before she was releasing audio recordings specifically denying that she’d been brainwashed. The jury couldn’t really buy it either and Hearst was found guilty, though one member was visibly crying while the guilty verdict was read. Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison but that was later commuted by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. On his last day in office in 2001, President Bill Clinton issued a full pardon for Hearst, who was now married to a former San Francisco police officer and living in the family compound in Wilton, California. While Patty Hearst was enjoying her presidential pardon, the last remaining members of the Symbionese Liberation Army were being sent to prison. Four former members had been apprehended for their roles in the Sacramento bank robbery and placed on trial in 2002. The following year, all got sentences of seven years, except for Emily Harris — the one holding the shotgun — who got 13 years added to the 20-to-life sentence she was already facing for trying to plant bombs under police cars in the 1970s. Patty Hearst, who had participated in all of these crimes, was granted immunity as a state witness before the trials began, but never called and so didn’t have to give a statement or appear in court to address the infamous crimes she’d been a part of all those years before.

Some named her Lady D eath. To Adolf Hitler 's men, she was "the Russian bitch from hell." Lyudmila Pavlichenko , the most successful female sniper in history, who was born on this day, is now widely known for having killed 309 German soldiers during the Second World War. Born close to Kiev, Ukraine, Pavlichenko was employed as a metal grinder at a munitions factory. During this time, she became a member of a paramilitary youth sports organisation that provided training in weapons handling and manners. When a neighbour's son bragged about his shooting skills, Pavlichenko “set out to show a girl could do as well. So I practised a lot.” Afterwards, she pursued her history studies at Kiev University, where she participated in sprinting and pole vaulting competitions while also receiving training at a sniper's school. Following Hitler's deployment of German troops and Romanian allies to the Soviet Union in June 1941, Pavlichenko enlisted in the Red Army with the specific goal of becoming a sniper. They initially preferred her to pursue a nursing career, but changed their minds after she successfully demonstrated her shooting skills during an unexpected "audition." Positioned on a hill near Odessa, where the Russians were holding their ground, Pavlichenko was given a rifle equipped with a telescopic sight and instructed to take aim at two Romanian individuals in the distance who were working with the Germans. “When I picked off the two, I was accepted,” she said. Pavlichenko experienced a momentary paralysis of fear when she first arrived on the battlefield, rendering her unable to lift her weapon until a young Russian soldier next to her was fatally shot. “He was such a nice, happy boy,” she recalled. “And he was killed just next to me. After that, nothing could stop me.” Pavlichenko spent approximately two and a half months carrying out operations near Odessa, during which time she achieved 187 kills. Following this, her unit was deployed to Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula, where she engaged in combat for over eight months. As one of 2,000 female snipers in the Red Army, Pavlichenko's tally of confirmed kills amounted to 309, with 36 of them being enemy snipers. At one stage, the Germans, who had labelled her as "the Russian bitch from hell," were so desperate to stop her that they blared radio messages: “Lyudmila Pavlichenko, come over to us. We will give you plenty of chocolate and make you a German officer.” In June 1942, Pavlichenko sustained injuries and, due to her increasing prominence, was removed from active duty. She was dispatched to the United States to seek backing for a “second front” in Europe, aiming to split German forces and ease the strain on Soviet troops. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt welcomed Pavlichenko, she became the first Soviet citizen to be received at the White House. Subsequently, she was asked to embark on a journey to 43 cities to share her experiences as a female soldier with the American public. In Chicago she told a large crowd: "I am 25 years old and I have killed 309 fascists. Gentlemen, don't you think that you have been hiding behind my back for too long?" Asked how she felt about killing, Pavlichenko said: “Every German who remains alive will kill women, children and old folks. Dead Germans are harmless. Therefore, if I kill a German, I am saving lives.” After the war she completed her education as a historian at Kiev University and became a research assistant for the Soviet navy. She died in 1974, aged 58.

Alfred G. Buckham, a pioneer in the field of aerial photography, left an indelible mark on the art form with his innovative techniques and artistic vision. His journey into the skies began with a meticulous selection of the right equipment and an unwavering dedication to perfecting his craft. Choosing the Right Aircraft The first crucial step in Buckham's aerial photography process was selecting the appropriate plane. He preferred older aircraft with open cockpits, flying at a sedate speed of 60 to 80 miles per hour. This slower pace allowed him to compose his shots more carefully, capturing landscapes in exquisite detail. Through trial and error, Buckham discovered that flying at altitudes between 1,000 and 2,000 feet provided the ideal perspective, balancing detail and broad scenery. Aerial View of Edinburgh - Alfred G Buckham Scottish National Portrait Gallery Copyright Richard & John Bukham Perfecting the Technique Buckham honed his aerial photography skills during his service with the Royal Naval Air Service. His vivid accounts of those early days reveal the challenges and triumphs of taking clear photographs at altitude. A key element in his success was the camera he used. Fortunately, Buckham's camera has been preserved, giving us insight into his process. He recommended cameras commonly used by newspaper reporters, which operated at eye level, as opposed to the bulky early models designed for aerial photography. The Forth Bridge - Alfred G Buckham Scottish National Portrait Gallery Copyright Richard & John Bukham “The camera best suited to the purpose and the one I usually employ has a F4.5 lens and a large direct vision view-finder the same size as the plate, fitted on the top of the lens panel,” he wrote. He also cautioned that the leather bellows of the camera needed reinforcement with cardboard or aluminum to withstand the forceful winds encountered at high altitudes. The Choice of Glass Plate Negatives Buckham's preference for glass plate negatives over the then-emerging photographic film was a conscious decision. He favored double-coated panchromatic plates from the USA, measuring 10.0cm by 12.5cm. Despite their bulk and fragility, these plates provided superior image quality. Throughout his career, Buckham emphasized the unparalleled clarity and detail that glass plates offered. The Storm Centre - Alfred G Buckham Scottish National Portrait Gallery Copyright Richard & John Bukham Crafting "Aerial View of Edinburgh" One of Buckham's renowned works, "Aerial View of Edinburgh," showcases his meticulous process from negative to final print. Selecting one of many negatives taken above Edinburgh, Buckham focused on the cityscape with minimal sky visible. This choice was deliberate, as landscape negatives require different exposure levels compared to sky photographs. In his darkroom, he used an enlarger to print a negative of just the cityscape, creating a detailed base for his final image. Sunset over the Pentlands Range - Alfred G Buckham Scottish National Portrait Gallery Copyright Richard & John Bukham The Artistic Touch The final stage of Buckham's process involved adding artistic touches to the photograph. Using watercolour paints and sometimes ink, he would enhance details and soften transitions between different elements of the image. In "Aerial View of Edinburgh," the clouds on the horizon were softened to seamlessly blend with the cityscape. Highlights were added to the clouds for dramatic effect, and the lighting below Arthur’s Seat was adjusted to match the sky above. Buckham also used dark watercolour or ink to sharpen key landmarks, ensuring they stood out in the final print. Unlike other photographers who altered negatives, Buckham added darker tones directly to the print, enhancing specific areas and creating unique pieces of art. He employed a scratching technique reminiscent of Turner, where dark areas were scratched to reveal the lighter paper beneath. This method not only highlighted details but also made each photograph a one-of-a-kind creation. Castle Island, Loch Leven (Where Mary Queen of Scots was Imprisoned) Alfred G Buckham Scottish National Portrait Gallery Copyright Richard & John Bukham A Unique Artistic Vision Buckham's photographs were not merely snapshots of moments in time but carefully crafted pieces of art. He combined known photographic techniques with his unique style, resulting in images that captured the essence of landscapes and cityscapes with unparalleled clarity and artistic flair. His legacy in aerial photography endures, showcasing a blend of technical prowess and artistic ingenuity that continues to inspire photographers today. Cloud Turrets - Alfred G Buckham Scottish National Portrait Gallery Copyright Richard & John Bukham

In the tumultuous tapestry of 20th-century Soviet history, few figures cast as sinister a shadow as Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria. Born on March 29, 1899, in Merkheuli, Beria's ascent through the ranks of Stalin's regime was marked by Machiavellian actions and unspeakable atrocities. Like Stalin, Beria was Georgian and was fondly referred to by Stalin as ‘my Himmler’. His involvement in revolutionary activities commenced during his adolescence, with a swift ascent to power culminating in his leadership of the secret police in Georgia by his twenties. It was here that he oversaw the ruthless purges of the 1930s, earning a reputation for his unyielding brutality. In 1938, Beria's trajectory propelled him to Moscow, where he assumed the role of deputy to Nikolai Yezhov, colloquially known as 'the blood-thirsty dwarf,' who headed the Soviet secret police. Following Yezhov's demise, orchestrated at Stalin's behest and purportedly at Beria's instigation, Beria ascended to the pinnacle of power within the secret police apparatus. Beria's tenure at the helm of the Soviet network of slave-labor camps was marred by his notoriety for sadistic acts of torture and his depraved predilection for rape and violence against women and young girls. Bald and bespectacled, by the time of Stalin's demise in 1953, Beria had become one of the most reviled figures in the nation. A young Lavrentiy Beria. Beria was a bad person, in almost every conceivable way. As one of Stalin's chief enforcers, he played a pivotal role in orchestrating some of the most heinous atrocities of that era. Yet, he exhibited no hint of remorse or shame regarding his zealous pursuit of his mission. “ Anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed,” he once promised. Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime. - Lavrentiy Beria For an extensive period, Beria occupied the position of chief within the NKVD, Stalin's infamous secret police force. Under his command, the NKVD spearheaded the harrowing purges of the 1930s, consigning countless politicians, writers, scientists, peasants, and everyday citizens to the grim confines of jail cells, torture chambers, and untimely death. Niki ta Khrushchev looked back in his memoirs, “Everyone lived in fear in those days. Everyone expected that at any moment there would be a knock on the door in the middle of the night and that knock on the door would prove fatal.” In June 1937 Beria delivered a speech which certainly supports Khrushchev’s analysis of the time. "Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin and Stalin, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed.” - Lavrentiy Beria Even preceding the early 1920s, Beria spearheaded the repression of a Georgian nationalist uprising, resulting in the execution of up to 10,000 individuals, exemplifying what would later be acknowledged as "Bolshevik ruthlessness." He served as the driving force behind the expansion of the extensive network of over 500 forced labour camps famously known as the "Gulags." One former prisoner Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko summed it up perfectly, “The Gulags existed before Beria, but he was the one who built them on a mass scale. He industrialised the Gulag system. Human life had no value for him.” Stalin possessed a grim understanding of Beria's cold and amoral disposition. During a significant World War Two conference with Allied leaders, the dictator introduced Beria to President Roosevelt as "our Himmler," a reference that bore chilling resonance given Beria's sanguinary track record and proficiency in lethal logistics. Throughout the war, Beria remained an active participant in enforcing Stalin's iron-fisted rule over the populace. It also witnessed his involvement in one of the most egregious atrocities amidst a conflict rife with them. It is often overlooked that in September 1939, it was not solely Hitler who invaded Poland. Stalin, emboldened by a non-aggression pact with Germany, similarly launched an invasion just weeks later from the east. Consequently, Poland found itself caught in the middle between two lunatics. Beria with Stalin. Brutality and mercilessness weren't hallmarks adopted solely by the Nazis, thousands of Polish troops were rounded up by the Russian forces and confined in camps, anxiously awaiting their fate. Little did they anticipate the horror that awaited them: utter annihilation at the hands of their Russian captors. Referred to as the Katyn Massacre, due to the discovery of one of the significant burial sites in the Katyn Forest, this egregious act of mass murder targeting Polish prisoners of war was directly orchestrated by Beria in 1940. Beria forwarded a memo to Stalin proposing the execution of the prisoners, citing them as a potential threat to the newly established Soviet regime in Poland. As a result, 22,000 soldiers, doctors, priests, and others met their demise. The USSR initially attributed the Katyn Massacre to the Nazis, persisting in this denial of responsibility for the atrocity for decades. It wasn't until as late as 1990 that the Soviet Union officially acknowledged and condemned the involvement of the NKVD in carrying out the killings, as well as the subsequent cover-up orchestrated by the Soviet government. The first page of Beria's notice (oversigned by Stalin and several other officials), to kill approximately 15,000 Polish officers and some 10,000 more intellectuals in the Katyn Forest and other places in the Soviet Union During 1941, Beria initiated yet another purge, this time targeting the Red Army. More than 500 NKVD agents and a staggering 30,000 Red Army officers met their demise. To grasp the magnitude of this figure, it's essential to note that it constituted the loss of three out of five marshals and fourteen out of sixteen army commanders. The Red Army high commanders had a phrase they had for being purged which was "going to have coffee with Beria". The Death Of Stalin Beria openly expressed his elation when Stalin, revered as a formidable deity-like figure within the Soviet Union, passed away from a cerebral haemorrhage in March 1953. In Khrushchev’s memoir he described, Beria as “spewing hatred” and “mocking” Stalin as he was incapacitated and slowly dying. Upon Stalin's eventual passing, It was plain to see that Beria’s ecstatic, and thus began his manoeuvring for the top job. " Beria was more treacherous, more practiced in perfidy and cunning, more insolent and single-minded than my father. in a word, he was a stronger character. ." - Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva Beria seemed perfectly positioned to take over the top job — his ally, Georgy Malenkov, ascended to the role of supreme leader, and Beria's extensive dossier of incriminating information on his adversaries, amassed during his tenure as chief of the secret police, seemingly granted him significant leverage. However, fate had other plans. Malenkov proved to be a feeble leader, swiftly eclipsed by Khrushchev — the unlikely contender who managed to derail Beria's ambitions in a stunning turn of events. According to the most widely embraced narrative, the pivotal moment occurred during an ostensibly routine gathering in June 1953 when Khrushchev unexpectedly launched accusations against Beria, branding him a traitor to the Soviet Union and even insinuating his collaboration with British intelligence. in short order, Beria's fellow officials joined the chorus, culminating in a surreal uprising punctuated by the sudden arrival of soldiers to apprehend him. As one rendition recounts, Beria was left stunned and filled with dread by this unforeseen onslaught — a reaction entirely warranted. Nestor Lakoba, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrentiy Beria and Aghasi Khanjian during the opening of the Moscow Metro in 1936, the same year that Lakoba and Khanjian were killed by Beria. In 1953 Beria stood trial, it had became apparent to all that he had committed numerous rapes during his tenure as NKVD chief. Historian Simon Montefiore explained that the evidence from the trial "reveals a sexual predator who used his power to indulge himself in obsessive depravity". After his death, charges of rape and sexual abuse were disputed by people close to Beria, including his wife Nina and his son Sergo. According to the testimony of Colonel Rafael Semyonovich Sarkisov and Colonel Sardion Nikolaevich Nadaraia – two of Beria's bodyguards – on warm nights during the war, Beria was often driven around Moscow in his limousine. He would point out young women that he wanted to be taken to his dacha, where wine and a feast awaited them. After dining, Beria would take the women into his soundproofed office and rape them. His bodyguards reported that their duties included handing each victim a flower bouquet as she left the house. Accepting it implied that the sex had been consensual; refusal would mean arrest. Sarkisov reported that after one woman rejected Beria's advances and ran out of his office, Sarkisov mistakenly handed her the flowers anyway. The enraged Beria declared, "Now, it is not a bouquet, it is a wreath! May it rot on your grave!" The NKVD arrested the woman the next day. Tatiana Okunevskaya The testimony of Sarkisov and Nadaraia has been partially corroborated by Edward Ellis Smith, an American who served in the US embassy in Moscow after the war. According to historian Amy Knight , "Smith noted that Beria's escapades were common knowledge among embassy personnel because his house was on the same street as a residence for Americans, and those who lived there saw girls brought to Beria's house late at night in a limousine." Women also submitted to Beria's sexual advances in exchange for the promise of freedom for imprisoned relatives. In one case, Beria picked up Tatiana Okunevskaya, a well-known Soviet actress, under the pretence of bringing her to perform for the Politburo. Instead he took her to his dacha, where he offered to free her father and grandmother from prison if she submitted. He then raped her, telling her, "Scream or not, it doesn't matter". In fact, Beria knew that Okunevskaya's relatives had been executed months earlier. Okunevskaya was arrested shortly afterwards and sentenced to solitary confinement in the Gulag, which she survived. Stalin and other high-ranking officials came to distrust Beria. In one instance, when Stalin learned that his then-teenage daughter, Svetlana, was alone with Beria at his house, he telephoned her and told her to leave immediately. When Beria complimented Alexander Poskrebyshev's daughter on her beauty, Poskrebyshev quickly pulled her aside and instructed her, "Don't ever accept a lift from Beria". After taking an interest in Voroshilov's daughter-in-law during a party at their summer dacha, Beria shadowed their car closely all the way back to the Kremlin, terrifying Voroshilov's wife. Beria with Svetlana, Stalin's daughter on his knee. Stalin's in the background. Before and during the war, Beria directed Sarkisov to keep a list of the names and phone numbers of the women that he had sex with. Eventually, he ordered Sarkisov to destroy the list as a security risk, but Sarkisov retained a secret copy. When Beria's fall from power began, Sarkisov passed the list to Viktor Abakumov, the former wartime head of SMERSH and now chief of the MGB – the successor to the NKVD. Abakumov was already aggressively building a case against Beria. Stalin, who was also seeking to undermine Beria, was thrilled by the detailed records kept by Sarkisov, demanding: "Send me everything this asshole writes down!" In 2003, the Russian government acknowledged Sarkisov's handwritten list of Beria's victims, which reportedly contains hundreds of names. The victims' names were also released to the public in 2003. Evidence suggests that Beria also murdered some of these women. In 1993, construction workers installing streetlights unearthed human bones near Beria's Moscow villa (now the Tunisian embassy). Skulls, pelvises and leg bones were found. In 1998, the skeletal remains of five young women were discovered during work carried out on the water pipes in the garden of the same villa. In 2011, building workers digging a ditch in Moscow city centre unearthed a common grave near the same residence containing a pile of human bones, including two children's skulls covered with lime or chlorine. The lack of articles and the condition of the remains indicate that these bodies were buried naked. According to Martin Sixsmith, in a BBC documentary, "Beria spent his nights having teenagers abducted from the streets and brought here for him to rape. Those who resisted were strangled and buried in his wife's rose garden." Vladimir Zharov, head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at Moscow's State University of Medicine and Dentistry and then the head of the criminal forensics bureau, said a torture chamber existed in the basement of Beria's villa and that there was probably an underground passage to burial sites. The Tunisian Embassy and the former home of Beria. A number of woman and children's bodies were unearthed in the basement. Additionally, an American report from 1952 quoted a former Muscovite as having "learned from one of Beria's mistresses that it was Beria's habit to order various women to become intimate with him and that he threatened them with prison if they refused." He was imprisoned and eventually put on trial in December of 1953 for a number of heinous crimes, including treason and terrorism, with his role in the purges being highlighted. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, and – if the recollections of his executioner are to be believed – he did not meet his fate bravely. His executioner’s wife later told the media that, just before being shot dead, Beria had “implored him for mercy, grovelling on his knees”. The executioner had bluntly responded by saying, “In all that you have done, so loathsome, mean and nasty, can you not find enough courage in yourself to accept your punishment in silence?” All the evidence points to Beria being a monster. However, it was an era rife with monsters, and many of Beria's contemporaries were likewise entangled in various forms of brutal violence. What's particularly intriguing about Beria is the paradoxical inclination he displayed towards steering Russia towards a more liberal path. Despite being Stalin's infamous henchman, had he ascended to power, he could have potentially emerged as a peacemaker and reformer akin to Gorbachev in the 1980s. Sources Amy Knight – Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1993ISBN: 9780691024810 Simon Sebag Montefiore – Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003ISBN: 9780297847681 Robert Service – Stalin: A Biography Publisher: Macmillan, 2004ISBN: 9780330510370 Pavel Sudoplatov – Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness — A Soviet Spymaster Publisher: Little, Brown & Company, 1994ISBN: 9780316821155 BBC History – “Lavrentiy Beria: Stalin’s Henchman” https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beria_lavrentiy.shtml The Guardian – “Lavrentiy Beria: Stalin’s Monster” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/mar/22/russia.books Pravda Archives – Soviet accounts and official communiqués on Beria’s downfall (1953)Accessible via: https://www.pravda.ru Oleg V. Khlevniuk – Master of the House: Stalin and His Inner Circle Publisher: Yale University Press, 2009ISBN: 9780300145646 Time Magazine Archive – “The Fall of Beria” (1953) https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,857242,00.html Christopher Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin – The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West Publisher: Penguin Books, 2000

Throughout history few stories are as harrowing and cautionary as that of Eben Byers, a wealthy industrialist whose life was forever altered by the allure of a seemingly miraculous cure: radium. Eben Byers was born into privilege on September 12, 1880, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the scion of a prominent industrialist family. His father, Charles E. Byers, was a titan of the steel industry, and young Eben inherited both his father's wealth and his ambition. However, fate had a cruel twist in store for the Byers family. Being raised in an environment of such substantial wealth ensured that the young Byers enjoyed the privilege of having access to the finest resources money could afford, including elite institutions like the renowned St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, and the institution known at that time as Yale College. Eben Byers distinguished himself primarily as an accomplished athlete. His crowning achievement came in 1906 when he clinched victory in the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship, as documented by the Golf Compendium. Following his sporting triumphs, Byers assumed leadership of the family enterprise, the A. M. Byers Company, renowned for its wrought iron manufacturing. Tragically, a catastrophic accident befell him shortly thereafter, marking the beginning of a fateful journey that would significantly influence the course of medical history. In the early 20th century, radium was hailed as a wonder drug, with proponents claiming it could cure everything from arthritis to impotence. Among its most enthusiastic advocates was Dr. William J.A. Bailey, a Harvard dropout posing as a doctor, concocted Radithor, a perilous blend of radium in water, amassing quick wealth. Despite brushes with the law and failed ventures, he peddled his toxic potion, with approximately 400,000 bottles sold, including 1,400 to Eben Byers, who fell victim to its lethal effects. The FDA intervened too late, underscoring the tragic consequences of Bailey's deceit. Despite lacking proper medical training, Bailey promoted radium as a panacea and attracted wealthy clients like Eben Byers. In 1927, Byers suffered a fall from a train carriage during a hunting trip, resulting in severe injuries to his arm and head. Desperate for relief from his pain, he turned to Dr. Bailey, who prescribed him a daily dose of radium-laced water, marketed as "Radithor." Unbeknownst to Byers, radium is an incredibly toxic substance. Its radioactive properties can wreak havoc on the body, destroying healthy tissue and causing irreparable damage to organs. Despite this, Byers dutifully followed Dr. Bailey's orders, believing the radium elixir would alleviate his suffering. Tragically, the opposite occurred. Over time, Byers began to experience alarming symptoms, including severe headaches, weight loss, and debilitating pain. By 1930, the true extent of his condition became horrifyingly apparent when his jaw began to disintegrate, a condition known as radium necrosis. In 1931, Eben Byers was due to give testimony to the Federal Trade Commission regarding his experiences with radium. Consequently, a lawyer was dispatched to his residence to take his statement. Shockingly, the lawyer discovered that Byers had lost most of his upper jaw, except for two front teeth, and a significant portion of his lower jaw. Furthermore, his remaining bone tissue was deteriorating, with holes forming in his skull, revealing the devastating effects of his radium exposure. Eben Byers passed away on March 31, 1932, with the cause attributed to "radiation poisoning," a term used at the time. However, his demise was a result of cancers induced by radium exposure, not acute radiation syndrome. Radium emits alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. While alpha radiation typically poses minimal danger due to its low penetrating ability, ingestion of radium, as in the case of Radithor, led to its accumulation in the bones. Unshielded by the skin, the highly-ionizing alpha radiation caused severe localised cell damage, ultimately resulting in Byers' cancer and subsequent death. He was laid to rest in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in a lead-lined coffin. Byers's death brought significant attention to the risks associated with radioactive "cures". In response, the Federal Trade Commission ordered Bailey's business to halt its misleading claims about Radithor's therapeutic benefits and its safety. Despite this, Bailey continued his ventures, establishing the "Radium Institute" and marketing various radioactive products, including a belt-clip, a paperweight, and a device claimed to render water radioactive. In 1965, MIT physicist Robley Evans estimated Byers' total radium intake at approximately 1000 μCi (37 MBq), with half from Ra-226 and the other half from the highly-radioactive mesothorium (Ra-228).

Everyone knows Thomas Edison, the prolific inventor behind the phonograph and the electric light bulb, but what you might not know is that he also had a knack for ideas that never quite took off. Across his lifetime, Edison held more than 2,300 patents worldwide. While some changed the course of history, others quietly disappeared, lost to time or doomed from the start. One such misstep was the eerie and ill-fated Edison Talking Doll. Embedded in each doll's tin torso was a miniaturized model of Thomas Edison's phonograph, its conical horn trained toward a series of perforations in the doll's chest. After unveiling the phonograph in 1877, a groundbreaking device that could record and play back sound, Edison began experimenting with the idea of bringing toys to life with recorded voices. By 1888, he had produced prototypes of a doll with a built-in phonograph. The idea was novel: children’s toys that could actually speak . By 1890, Edison’s company was ready to sell them. The dolls were sizeable at 22 inches tall and made mostly of metal, which gave them a cold, rigid feel. Inside each one was a miniature phonograph and a horn directed through tiny holes in the doll’s chest. A small crank at the back brought the doll to life — or something like it — reciting nursery rhymes in a voice that many found downright unsettling. Originally, the dolls used tin cylinders to store the audio, but somewhere along the line, this was switched to wax — a change Edison’s team never publicly explained, but one that would prove disastrous. The wax was far less durable, and it degraded quickly after just a few uses. Many recordings were nearly unintelligible by the time the dolls reached customers. Even Edison himself was horrified, once remarking, “The voices of the little monsters were exceedingly unpleasant to hear.” Each doll’s recording had to be done manually, one by one, there was no mass-production method for sound recordings in 1890. That meant no two dolls sounded quite the same, which is fascinating today but was a logistical nightmare at the time. Combine that with the price, around two weeks’ wages for the basic version, and even more for the dressed-up models, and you’ve got a recipe for consumer disaster. When the dolls hit shelves in New York on April 7, 1890, expectations were high. But the excitement quickly fizzled. Few worked properly, many arrived damaged, and the crank mechanism was finicky at best. Complaints poured in. Within weeks, Edison halted production. Fewer than 500 dolls were sold — most of which were promptly returned by disappointed and sometimes frightened parents. By May, the project was scrapped altogether. Today, Edison’s Talking Dolls are rare collector’s items and museum curiosities. Only a handful survive in playable condition, and those that do reveal the crackling, ghostly voice of a bygone experiment in early sound technology. If you ever hear one — and you can, thanks to digital preservation — it’s equal parts fascinating and unsettling. As for Edison? He moved on to his next big thing. But the failure of the talking doll serves as a quirky reminder that even history’s greatest inventors had their off days. Play the video below to hear the doll pictured above sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star (best not to do it before going to bed).

History often turns on public moments. Yet it is the private relationships that most reliably reveal how power was lived rather than performed. Few friendships of the twentieth century sit so awkwardly at this intersection as that between John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings. It was a bond formed in adolescence, carried through war and ambition, and finally tested by grief. For decades it has also been a relationship onto which others have projected assumptions about sexuality, loyalty, and influence at the heart of American politics. What follows is not a bid to prove what cannot be proven. It is an attempt to set out, carefully and in full, what is known, what has been alleged, and why this friendship continues to attract attention long after both men are gone. Choate, 1933: The Making of a First Friend Billings, a 16 year old third year student, and Kennedy, then 15 and in his second year, met in the autumn term of 1933 at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Connecticut. Choate was an elite preparatory school, formal in structure and ruthless in its social hierarchies. Kennedy arrived with money, name recognition, and a fragile constitution. Billings arrived on scholarship, tall at 6 foot 2 inches, weighing around 175 pounds, and known for his physical strength as a leading member of the Choate crew team. They became close quickly. Together they formed a small prank club called “The Muckers,” a name that captured both adolescent rebellion and a taste for mischief. Their pranks were mostly minor, though one planned act involving horse manure in the school gym was abandoned after intervention from the headmaster. These stories mattered later not because they were remarkable, but because they established Billings as someone who made Kennedy laugh and feel included. Billings’ financial situation was precarious during the Depression. His scholarship kept him at Choate, and he repeated his senior year so that he and Kennedy could graduate together in 1935. From Christmas 1933 onwards, Billings was welcomed into the Kennedy household in Palm Beach and increasingly treated as one of the family. Holidays, family events, and travel soon became routine. One early document has been cited repeatedly in later biographies. Jerry Oppenheimer reports that Billings once wrote Kennedy a love note on a piece of toilet paper. Kennedy’s reply was curt but not cruel. “Please don’t write to me on toilet paper anymore. I’m not that kind of boy.” Whether this was a firm rejection, adolescent embarrassment, or simply humour is impossible to say. What is clear is that the friendship did not end. It deepened. Europe, Princeton, and War In the summer of 1937, Kennedy and Billings travelled through Europe together. These journeys mattered. Kennedy’s later political worldview was shaped by his observations of fascism and instability on the continent. Billings was present for those formative impressions, acting as companion and sounding board. Kennedy and Lem Billings with the dog Dunker/Offie in the Hague, Netherlands, 24 August 1937, Billings graduated from Princeton University in 1939, majoring in art and architecture, and wrote his senior thesis on the painter Tintoretto. This detail is often overlooked, yet it hints at the role Billings would later play as Kennedy’s artistic adviser and cultural sounding board. The Second World War separated the two men physically but not emotionally. Billings failed the medical tests required for military service in 1941, largely due to poor eyesight. With the support of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., he joined the American Field Service ambulance unit and served in North Africa between 1942 and 1943. In 1944, he received a commission in the US Naval Reserve and served in the South Pacific until his discharge in 1946. Kennedy, meanwhile, returned from war as a decorated naval officer. Their paths reconverged as Kennedy entered politics. Politics, Loyalty, and the Campaign Years Billings worked on Kennedy’s successful 1946 campaign for Congress. Soon after, he toured seven Latin American countries with Robert F. Kennedy. From 1946 to 1948 he attended Harvard Business School, earning an MBA, and then drifted through a series of jobs that never quite fit his temperament. He sold Coca Cola dispensers, worked at a General Shoe store, and later became vice president of Emerson Drug Company in Baltimore. There he invented Fizzies, a powdered soft drink flavoured to mask the taste of sodium citrate. It became a minor 1950s craze. By 1958 Billings had moved to Manhattan to work as an advertising executive at Lennen and Newell. He remained close to the Kennedy family. He was an usher at John F. Kennedy’s wedding to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1953 and again at the wedding of Kennedy’s sister Jean in 1956. During the 1960 presidential campaign, Billings took leave from his job to work full time. He managed the Third Congressional District during the Wisconsin primary and became a general troubleshooter during the critical West Virginia primary. His role was never official, but it was constant. The White House: Presence Without Portfolio Once Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, Billings’ position became more visible and more controversial. Kennedy offered him senior roles including head of the Peace Corps, director of the US Travel Service, and ambassador to Denmark. Billings declined them all. “I realised that I did not want to work for the president because I felt it would change our relationship.” Instead, he occupied an ambiguous space. He was appointed to boards and trusteeships, including the National Cultural Center which later became the Kennedy Center, and the planning board for the 1964 to 1965 New York World’s Fair. Yet his true influence lay in proximity. Billings visited the White House most weekends. He had his own room on the third floor. A butler once commented on his belongings being left there, prompting the First Lady to reply, “He’s been my house guest since I was married.” Billings with the Kennedy family in Atoka, Va., in October 1963. He organised dinner parties when Kennedy was alone, kept Jacqueline company when the President travelled, accompanied the family to church, delivered pets to the children, and joined foreign tours in 1961 and 1963. Some staff joked that they saw him so often they mistook him for Secret Service. Historian Sally Bedell Smith later likened him to Leonard Zelig, always present in the background of important moments. He sat with the Kennedy family at the inauguration and walked just behind the widow at the funeral procession. Rumours, Allegations, and the Problem of Proof It is here that speculation intensifies. Lawrence J. Quirk claimed that Billings told him his relationship with Kennedy had been sexual. Quirk alleged that this involved oral sex with Kennedy always on the receiving end, framing it as part of Kennedy’s ability to maintain a self image as heterosexual. Quirk wrote that Kennedy “was in love with Lem being in love with him and considered him the ideal follower adorer.” These claims remain uncorroborated. They are based on Quirk’s recollections and conversations rather than documentary evidence. Other observers were sceptical. Journalist Ben Bradlee later said, “I suppose it’s known that Lem was gay. It impressed me that Jack had gay friends.” At the same time, he noted that no one spoke openly about sexuality during the White House years. Writer Gore Vidal was far less kind, once calling Billings the “chief faggot at Camelot” and claiming Kennedy felt comfortable around homosexual men as long as they were intelligent enough to hold his interest. Vidal also believed Kennedy needed Billings practically. “He needed Lem Billings to get around better than a trained nurse,” he said, suggesting illness and chronic pain made Billings’ presence politically useful. Ted Sorensen described Billings as “an admirer, almost a fawning admirer.” Arthur Schlesinger thought Billings glared suspiciously at anyone whose friendship with Kennedy post dated his own. None of this proves a sexual relationship. It does, however, demonstrate how unusual the intimacy appeared to those around them. It's also worth highlighting an image that's often miscaptioned, appearing over the years the below photo is indeed of a young JFK, however, archivists at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum told Snopes that while the photo is genuine — that is, not digitally modified or created using artificial intelligence — and shows Kennedy, the man with him is likely not Billings. The photo can be found in a scrapbook covering Kennedy's time at Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school, where he graduated in the Class of 1935. An archivist at the presidential library also said the photo appeared in "Rose Kennedy's Family Album," a 2013 book consisting of 300 photos from the library's collection.  Grief, Control, and the Kennedy Children Billings was devastated by Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. One historian later described him as “probably the saddest of the Kennedy widows.” He saw Kennedy for the last time just 9 days before his death, at a White House dinner with Greta Garbo. After the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Billings’ grief deepened into depression and alcoholism. He became increasingly close to Robert Kennedy’s children, particularly Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. Oppenheimer described Billings as a “gay Svengali” figure who attempted to guide and control Bobby Jr.’s life during his teenage years. One source told him, “Young Bobby replaced Jack in Lem’s heart of hearts.” These claims are contested. David Pitts, author of Jack and Lem , acknowledged rumours but stated he had no evidence of sexual activity and would discount it. What is not disputed is that Billings acted as a surrogate father figure at a time when the Kennedy family was fractured by violence and loss. Ironically, members of the Skakel family had earlier been openly hostile to Billings. During Ethel Skakel’s wedding, her brother knocked Billings down the church aisle, a moment remembered by witnesses as both humiliating and telling. Later Years and Death In the 1970s Billings’ behaviour changed markedly. He struggled with substance abuse and was gradually discouraged from spending time with younger Kennedy men. Yet he remained tied to the family through trustee roles and social obligations. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis invited him to accompany her and the children to England in 1965 for the unveiling of the Kennedy memorial at Runnymede. He continued to attend major events and maintained friendships with Christopher Lawford and others. In 1981, Billings died in his sleep following a heart attack in his Manhattan apartment. He was 65. His dying wish was that the young Kennedy men carry his coffin. When they arrived at the cemetery to find it already positioned, they lifted it and carried it around the gravesite before returning it to the plot. He is buried in Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. At his funeral, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. delivered the eulogy. “I’m sure he’s already organising everything in heaven,” he said, “with just the right Early American furniture, the right curtains, the right rugs, the right paintings, and everything ready for a big, big party.” What the Friendship Tells Us Whether or not John F. Kennedy and Lem Billings were ever lovers may never be resolved. What can be said with confidence is that their relationship was unusually intense, emotionally asymmetrical, and enduring. It survived adolescence, war, ambition, marriage, and the pressures of the presidency. In a political culture that prized masculine image and conformity, Billings occupied a precarious role. He was indispensable yet unofficial, visible yet undefined. That ambiguity is precisely why the friendship continues to fascinate. It forces historians to confront how much of power operates beyond formal titles and how deeply personal loyalty can shape public life.

Lee Miller in a photograph she staged in Hitler’s bathtub in Munich in 1945. After documenting the harrowing scenes of liberation at Buchenwald and Dachau, including piles of human bones and the haunting presence of barely surviving prisoners, Lee Miller, accompanied by Life photographer David E. Scherman, ventured to Hitler' s Munich apartment. She removed her dusty boots, leaving traces of the horrors she witnessed Buchenwald and Dachau on a clean bathmat, before posing in Hitler's bathtub. The contact sheet of Miller and Scherman taking turns in Hitler's bath In various shots, Miller's expressions range from contemplative to interrupted, with the iconic image capturing her seemingly surprised gaze. These alternate takes, discovered by her son's wife, Suzanna, shed light on Miller's creative process. It's thanks to her son, Antony Penrose, and his dedication to preserving her legacy that we have a deeper understanding of Lee Miller's extraordinary life beyond this infamous moment. Her bath-time photo is just one chapter in a remarkable life story. Lee Miller, SS Guard in Canal, 1945. Miller’s notes on the back of some of her photographs were very telling of “the level of coldness and anger that was in her heart in that moment,” said Penrose. Miller's early years saw her as a successful model in New York City, where she caught the eye of Vogue magazine's publisher, Condé Nast. However, Miller's ambitions extended far beyond the realm of fashion, and in 1929 she found herself in Paris, drawn into the vibrant world of surrealist art. It was in Paris where Miller's path intersected with some of the greatest artistic minds of her time. She became both a collaborator and muse to luminaries such as Pablo Picasso and Man Ray. Miller's collaboration with the surrealist artist Man Ray was not only creatively enriching but also profoundly influential in both their lives. Initially introduced as a model, Miller quickly emerged as Ray's muse, captivating him with her striking beauty and avant-garde spirit. Their professional partnership transcended traditional boundaries, as Miller actively contributed to Ray's photographic experiments and artistic vision. Together, they explored unconventional techniques such as solarisation, through an accident variously described; one of Miller's accounts involved a mouse running over her foot, causing her to switch on the light in mid-development producing ground-breaking images that challenged societal norms and expanded the possibilities of photography as an art form. After leaving Man Ray and Paris in 1932, Miller returned to New York City. She established a portrait and commercial photography studio (with $10,000 worth of backing from friends) with her brother Erik (who had worked for the fashion photographer Toni von Horn) as her darkroom assistant. Miller rented two apartments, one became her home, while the other became the Lee Miller Studio. In 1933, Miller had the the only solo exhibition of her life, some of the portraits displayed featured stars of stage and screen of the time. In 1934, Miller abandoned her studio to marry the Egyptian businessman and engineer Aziz Eloui Bey, who had come to New York City to buy equipment for Egyptian railways. Miller moved to Egypt with her new husband and attempted to settle down to a quiet life in Cairo (her photos from this time are fascinating, as if you’re looking at a movie set), but it didn’t last long. By 1937, Miller had grown bored with her life in Cairo. She returned to Paris, where she met and married the British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose . Miller began working as a photographer for British Vogue, just around the time WW2 broke out. She became the official war photographer for Vogue, documenting the Blitz. “It would’ve been incredibly easy for her to disappear to America and sit the war out. But she didn’t,” said Penrose about why Miller went to war. “I think she wanted to stay and try and do something. And nobody was going to give her a gun or an airplane, or something useful like that—so she used her camera.” She photographed scenes of desperation and destruction: young dead, beaten soldiers; citizens in fire masks, preparing for the worst; ruined landmarks; concentration-camp prostitutes gathered in army trucks. She sent her film off to Vogue, which published some of Miller’s most powerful and horrific work from the Holocaust. Miller in 1943 Lee Miller collaborated extensively with American photographer David E. Scherman, a correspondent for Life magazine, on various assignments. Their partnership led them to France shortly after D-Day, where Miller documented significant events such as the use of napalm at the siege of St. Malo, the liberation of Paris, and the Battle of Alsace. However, their most haunting work together unfolded in the Nazi concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau. Perhaps their most iconic image emerged from Miller's unapologetic act of defiance: posing in Adolf Hitler's bathtub in Munich, with traces of Dachau's dust on her boots deliberately sullying the dictator's bathroom. This moment, captured on April 30, 1945 – coincidentally the day of Hitler's suicide – remains emblematic of Miller and Scherman's partnership. Reflecting on the experience, Miller confessed to carrying Hitler's address for years afterwards. Throughout this period, Miller's lens captured the poignant realities of wartime Europe: from the heartbreaking scenes of dying children in a Vienna hospital to the everyday struggles of post-war Hungarian peasants. She documented the aftermath of conflict, including the sombre sight of Nazi officers and their families in death and the execution of Hungarian Prime Minister László Bárdossy. Even after the war's end, her dedication to journalistic integrity persisted during her tenure with Vogue, where she aimed to preserve war as a historical testament. Her surrealist approach, akin to her earlier modelling work, lent a unique perspective, often framed through the haunting confines of cattle trains. Miller's photographs transcended mere documentation; they were compositions of journalism and art, meticulously crafted to evoke deep emotion. As war-weary audiences grappled with the reality of atrocities, Miller's telegrams to British Vogue's editor, Audrey Withers, urged the publication of images from the camps, prompted by broadcasts from journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Richard Dimbleby. Miller's role as a wartime photojournalist extended beyond providing a mere record; her work served as a vital eyewitness account, bringing the harsh realities of war to a disbelieving world. Upon her return to Britain from central Europe, Miller grappled with severe bouts of clinical depression and what we now recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Struggling with uncertainty about her future, she turned to heavy drinking as a coping mechanism. However, amidst this turmoil, she found solace and purpose in her creative pursuits. Commissioned by British Vogue in November 1946 to illustrate an article on James Joyce's Dublin, Miller embarked on a photographic journey through the city's streets, capturing its essence as it once was during Joyce's time. Her evocative images, published in American Vogue in May 1947 and British Vogue in 1950, offer a vivid snapshot of Joyce's world. Meanwhile, her personal life underwent significant changes as well. In 1947, she married Antony Penrose, her son's father, and together they established their home at Farley Farm House in East Sussex. This idyllic setting soon became a haven for renowned artists like Picasso and Man Ray, who found inspiration in its tranquil surroundings. Despite occasional photo assignments for Vogue, Miller's focus shifted towards culinary pursuits, delighting guests with her gourmet creations (according to her housekeeper Patsy, Miller specialised in "historical food" like roast suckling pig as well as treats such as marshmallows in a cola sauce). However, despite outward appearances of contentment, Miller continued to grapple with the haunting memories of war, which ultimately took a toll on her mental health (possibly accelerated by her husband's long affair with the trapeze artist Diane Deriaz). Miller passed away at the age of 70 in the peaceful surroundings of Farley Farm House in East Sussex. Her departure left a void in the artistic community, yet her contributions to photography and her indomitable spirit continue to inspire generations of artists and thinkers such as Gucci's Frida Giannini , Ann Demeulemeester , and Alexander McQueen . Playwright David Hare commented, "Today, when the mark of a successful iconographer is to offer craven worship of wealth, or yet more craven worship of power and celebrity, it is impossible to imagine an artist of Lee's subtlety and humanity commanding the resources of a mass-market magazine." Mark Haworth-Booth , curator of The Art of Lee Miller , has said "her photographs shocked people out of their comfort zone" and that "she had a chip of ice in her heart...she got very close to things... Margaret Bourke-White was far away from the fighting, but Lee was close. That's what makes the difference--Lee was prepared to shock."

The Berlin Wall stood as a powerful symbol both during its years of concrete reality and in the moment it finally fell. For nearly 30 years it split East and West Germany, shaping daily life so profoundly that many believed they would never witness its opening. When the borders finally eased and reunification followed, the shift was so significant that it reshaped the way people understood their own futures. This is how looked then, and how it looks now. An abandoned car at the Wall by the Brandenburg Gate in 1989 and today. West Berlin police in 1988 at the Glienicker Brücke which crossed from West Berlin into the GDR at Potsdam. The Brandenburg Gate in 1962 behind concrete blocks. US tanks at Checkpoint Charlie on Friedrichstraße in October 1961, shortly after the Wall was constructed. Andrei Sacharov and his wife Yelena Bonner, were exiled to Gorky for seven years, the banner asks for justice Border police at Invalidenstraße/Sandkrugbrücke crossing in 1971. The Versöhnungskirche Bernauer Straße, was demolished in 1985. The East Side Gallery in 1990 before this former stretch of the Wall became a focal point for artists. The Wall at Brücke Waldemarstraße, Kreuzberg in 1986. Pariser Platz by the Brandenburg Gate is sealed off in autumn 1989.

During World War II, the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands spurred the rise of many resistance groups, but few stories are as remarkable as those of Truus Oversteegen, Freddie Oversteegen, and Hannie Schaft. These young women displayed extraordinary courage and resilience, engaging in direct action against the Nazis. Their stories are not only a testament to their bravery but also an inspiration for future generations. Family Background and Early Life Truus Oversteegen was born on August 29, 1923, and her sister Freddie Oversteegen followed on September 6, 1925. Raised in a leftist, working-class family in the industrial town of Haarlem, their mother was a staunch communist and feminist who instilled in them a strong sense of social justice. The family also harboured refugees and political dissidents, laying the groundwork for the sisters’ future resistance activities. Hannie Schaft, born Jannetje Johanna Schaft on September 16, 1920, grew up in Haarlem as well. Unlike the Oversteegens, her family was more affluent and conservative. Hannie was studying law at the University of Amsterdam when the war interrupted her education. The Call to Resistance The Oversteegen sisters were just 14 and 16 years old when they began their resistance work. Initially, they distributed anti-Nazi leaflets and helped Jewish children find safe houses. As the war progressed, their involvement deepened. Truus and Freddie joined the Council of Resistance (Raad van Verzet) in 1941, engaging in more dangerous missions such as sabotage and armed attacks. Hannie Schaft, known later as “The Girl with the Red Hair,” joined the resistance after witnessing the injustices of the Nazi regime firsthand. By 1943, she had become an integral part of the group, working alongside the Oversteegen sisters. Schaft did not, however, accept every assignment. When asked to kidnap the children of a Nazi official she refused. If the plan had failed, the children would have to be killed, and Schaft felt that was too similar to the Nazis' acts of terror. When seen at the location of a particular assassination, Schaft was identified as "the girl with the red hair". Her involvement led "the girl with the red hair" to be placed on the Nazis' most-wanted list. Luring Nazis into the Forest One of the most harrowing tactics used by the trio was seducing German soldiers and Dutch collaborators to isolated areas where they could be ambushed and killed. This tactic was not only dangerous but required immense psychological strength. Freddie Oversteegen recounted one such mission: “We had to go to a meeting place, and we had to dance with those men, but we could not show any emotions, because those men were our enemies. I was just 16 when I did this. One time, I met a man who wanted to go for a walk in the woods. So, we did, and when we were deep enough into the woods, he asked me if I would ‘go with him’. That was when I had to lure him to the spot where my comrades were waiting. We went there, and he was shot. I had to see him die.” These missions required them to walk a fine line between feigned interest and the constant risk of being discovered. Resistance Activities and Sabotage Truus, Freddie, and Hannie were not only skilled at luring enemies but also actively engaged in a range of daring sabotage missions that significantly impacted the German occupation in the Netherlands. Their operations extended beyond mere deception, involving the strategic destruction of crucial infrastructure such as railway lines and bridges, which disrupted German supply lines and communication networks. The trio's audacious acts included derailing trains carrying supplies for the enemy and launching direct assaults on Nazi officials, sending a powerful message of resistance and defiance. Among the three, Hannie Schaft stood out for her exceptional bravery and unwavering commitment to the Dutch resistance cause. Her reputation as a fearless operative grew as she undertook increasingly dangerous missions, culminating in the dramatic assassination of Willem Ragut, a prominent member of the Dutch Nazi Party. This bold act not only struck a blow to the occupiers but also inspired others to join the fight against oppression. A Notable Operation In one notable operation, Truus and Hannie were tasked with eliminating a high-ranking Gestapo officer. As Truus later described: “Hannie and I had to wait in the woods, but when the car approached, it was clear there were more soldiers than we had expected. We had to adjust our plan quickly, and in the end, we managed to carry out the attack, but it was a very close call.” Capture and Aftermath Truus and Freddie survived the war, continuing to contribute to Dutch society through various roles. However, the war’s end was not kind to Hannie Schaft. She was captured by the Nazis in March 1945 and executed on April 17, 1945, just weeks before the liberation of the Netherlands. Hannie’s Final Moments Hannie’s courage was evident even in her final moments. As she faced her executioners, she reportedly said: “I shoot better than you,” after the first bullet only wounded her. She was then fatally shot again. Legacy and Recognition After the war, Truus and Freddie Oversteegen were honoured for their bravery. Truus received the Mobilisation War Cross and became a public speaker, advocating for the recognition of female resistance fighters. Freddie also shared her experiences in interviews, ensuring that the stories of their resistance were not forgotten. Hannie Schaft became a symbol of resistance, her story immortalised in books, films, and memorials. Her legacy is particularly remembered every year on National Remembrance Day in the Netherlands. A Lasting Impact The bravery of these three women has left an indelible mark on history. Their willingness to face unimaginable risks for the sake of freedom and justice continues to inspire. Sources 1. “Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus, and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of World War II”  by Sophie Poldermans 2. “The Girl with the Red Hair”  by Theun de Vries 3. “Hannie Schaft: Het Meisje Met Het Rode Haar”  by Hanneke Verbeek 4. “Inside the Dutch Resistance: Memoirs of an American Agent”  by Henry G. Schogt

Every so often a film comes along that changes the way you look at cinema and shocks the very foundations of the film industry. 'Who Killed Captain Alex' is just one of those films. Produced by Wakaliwood studios it was filmed in Wakaliga, a slum in Uganda's capital of Kampala by Its founder and director Nabwana I.G.G., Uganda's Quentin Tarantino. Nabwana's formative years were spent amidst the tumultuous era of Idi Amin's rule in the 1970s Uganda. While the nation grappled with violence and ethnic strife, the land owned by Nabwana's grandfather provided a haven of relative tranquility. His passion for filmmaking ignited from cherished memories of watching reruns of shows like Hawaii Five-O and Logan's Run, coupled with a deep-seated admiration for Hollywood action flicks and martial arts masterpieces from his youth. Despite never setting foot in a cinema, Nabwana eagerly absorbed accounts of newly released films described by his brothers and friends. It wasn't until 2005, following a stint in a computer course on video editing and a study of filmmaking tutorials, that Nabwana established Ramon Film Productions (later becoming Wakaliwood), named after his grandmothers Rachael and Monica. The studio makes pr ops and jibs out of DIY parts, which commentators have compared to the early days of Hollywood. Among the studio's props is a full sized helicopter frame that has become a staple in all Wakaliwood films. Nabwana shoots and edits his films using old computers that he assembles. Squibs and theatrical blood, used to simulate bloody gunshots, are made from condoms filled with red food colouring an d tied to fishing lines before being taped to the actors' chests. Nabwana had previously used cow blood, but was forced to discontinue its use after one of his actors developed brucellosis . Upon a film's completion, the actors sell DVD copies door-to-door in a one-week time window to ensure they make money before the film is bootlegged Who Killed Captain Alex? In 2010 Wakaliwood released 'Who Killed Captain Alex' which quickly gained viral notoriety for being a no-budget action film , produced on a reported budget of under $200 (the producer says the budget was actually $85). The original version of t he film was lost due to power outages and "strained conditions" according to Nabwana, while the surviving version of Who Killed Captain Alex? released online includes commentary from the first English-speaking "Video Joker" that includes running gags about the characters (see above). I'm going to give an outline of the plot now, so if you want to watch it and don't want spoilers, stop reading here! Captain Alex, one of the most decorated officers in the Uganda People's Defence Force, is sent out to capture the crime boss Richard and his Tiger Mafia, a criminal organisation that controls the drug trade of the city of Kampala. Alex sets up camp in the village of Wakaliga. After doing so, his soldiers go to a bar where a fight ensues between them and the villagers. Alex breaks it up and takes them out of the bar. Alex and his soldiers locate the Tiger Mafia during a drug deal and infiltrate it. In the following fight, Richard's brother is captured. Richard berates his men, shoots his wife Ritah in his fit of rage, and then swears revenge against Alex. He orders a spy to seduce Alex in his tent and sends the mafia to capture him later that night. However, Alex is killed by an unknown source, leaving the mafia and his soldiers in disarray. Captain Alex's brother, a Ugandan shaolin monk named Bruce U arrives at Kampala the next morning in search of the murderer and finds a Tiger Mafia card in Alex's tent. Elsewhere, the mafia tells Richard that Alex is dead; Richard becomes irate because he wanted Alex brought to him. Bruce goes to a shaolin temple where he fights the other martial artist until the master appears. Bruce asks the master for help on his quest for vengeance, but the latter declines. Bruce goes to the forest to train for his quest on his own. After sleeping in a tree, he discovers Ritah, who has amnesia after being shot by her husband. Bruce, unaware that she was part of the Tiger Mafia, comes to her aid. After training in a nearby lake, he discovers that Ritah was a member of the mafia due to a tattoo with the mafia's initials. Ritah regains her memory and agrees to take Bruce to the Tiger Mafia base. The UPDF hires a new military leader who formulates a plan to attack the mafia's base. However, his plan is overheard by Richard through the phone of a turncoat police officer. Richard gathers the mafia at the base to prepare and sends one of his men to steal an attack helicopter to bomb Kampala to serve as a distraction for the government. Bruce invades the mafia's base, but is captured and brought to Richard, who orders three of his men to fight him with combat skills. Bruce holds his own for some time but is eventually overwhelmed. The military bombs the base with a helicopter, forcing the mafia into a forest where they fight the UPDF. After the chaotic fighting, the entire mafia is dead and only Richard remains. He strips the gun off one of his deceased men, kills a number of soldiers, and takes down the military helicopter but is eventually shot and captured. The Ugandan government places Kampala under martial law, and the film abruptly ends as the Video Joker thanks the audience for watching. More recent Wakaliwood productions In March 2015, Wakaliwood initiated a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of raising US$160 for their movie Tebaatusasula: Ebola. Remarkably, the studio garnered over US$13,000 from 374 supporters by April 1st. Tebaatusasula: Ebola acts as both a direct sequel to Who Killed Captain Alex? and a reinterpretation of the 2010 film Tebaatusasula, which was unfortunately lost due to a significant power surge damaging the hard drive containing the film. Later that year, in September, the Wakaliwood team participated in the Nyege Nyege Festival in Jinja, where they spent two days filming Attack on Nyege Nyege, getting festival attendees as extras.

Dr. Young's Ideal Rectal Dilators, marketed in the United States from the late 19th century through at least the 1940s, were part of the growing industry of patent and proprietary medicines and devices during that era. These dilators were sold in sets of four, resembling torpedoes, made of hard rubber initially, later transitioning to plastic. Ranging from 1⁄2 to 1 inch in diameter and 3 to 4 inches in length, they were detailed in a retrospective piece in The American Journal of Gastroenterology, which noted their similarity to contemporary rectal dilators. In an editorial from 1893 in Medical News, it was observed that "Dr. Young," who also served as the editor of another journal, advocated for rectal dilation as a treatment for insanity. He asserted that "three-fourths of all the howling maniacs of the world" could be cured "in a few weeks' time" through orificial methods. Medical News posed the question, Why, then, in the name of pity and kindness, do these men not apply the dilators each to himself or to each other? We very much fear all this imbecility may rest upon a semi-pathologic basis, and that Krafft-Ebing may have a new chapter to write concerning sodomic perversion in his work upon sexual psychopathy The product claimed it corrected constipation, promoted more refreshing sleep, and could relieve foul breath, bad taste in the mouth, sallow skin, acne, anaemia, lassitude, mental hebetude, insomnia, anorexia, headaches, diarrhoea, haemorrhoids, flatulence, indigestion, nervousness, irritability, cold extremities, and numerous other ailments. The instructions warned, “Do not neglect to use your Dilators ... It is advisable to use [them] occasionally as a precautionary measure. You need have no fear of using them too much.” A 1905 advertisement by F. E. Young and Co. of Chicago promised that "The best results may be obtained by the use of Young's self-retaining rectal dilators", the use of which "accomplishes for the invalid just what nature does daily for the healthy individual". Doctors were advised that "If you will prescribe a set of these dilators in some of your obstinate cases of Chronic Constipation you will find them necessary in every case of this kind". The price of a set "to the profession" was $2.50 (equivalent to $80 in 2024). Young admitted that some patients panicked at the sight of the devices In 1940, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York confiscated a shipment of these devices for being misbranded. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's subsequent Drugs and Devices Court Case Notice of Judgment (entitled "U.S. v. 67 Sets of Dr. Young's Rectal Dilators and 83 Packages of Dr. Young's Piloment"), the product's labelling claimed it could address constipation, improve sleep quality, and alleviate a wide array of issues including bad breath, sallow skin, acne, anemia, fatigue, mental dullness, insomnia, lack of appetite, headaches, diarrhoea, haemorrhoids, flatulence, indigestion, nervousness, irritability, cold extremities, and many other ailments. The accompanying instructions cautioned users not to neglect the use of the dilators and even suggested their occasional use as a preventive measure, reassuring that there was no risk of overuse. The devices were held to be "dangerous to health when used with the frequency and duration prescribed, recommended or suggested in the labeling", and the shipment was ordered to be destroyed.