Remembered as one of early Hollywood’s boldest stars, Marlene Dietrich transformed her fame into a weapon against Nazi Germany. Despite Hitler’s attempts to lure her home as the face of Nazi cinema, Dietrich became an American citizen and toured the United States to sell war bonds. She donated her Hollywood paychecks to aid Jewish refugees and recorded propaganda music to weaken German morale. Her fight even reached the front lines, where she braved harsh conditions to perform for thousands of Allied troops from North Africa to England.

Rising From Berlin Cabarets to Hollywood Stardom

Born in 1901 in Berlin, Germany, Dietrich’s upbringing was marked by the violence of the First World War. Like many others, she turned towards the vibrant and expressive post-war art scene in Berlin. She quickly captivated audiences as a talented cabaret singer, actress, and dancer. Her scandalous lifestyle as a bisexual mixed with her alluring charm and more masculine style made her a sensation in the Weimar Republic. After the success of The Blue Angel (1930), Dietrich captured the attention of Paramount Pictures and Hollywood. Within a few years, she was one of the highest-paid and most acclaimed actresses in the world.

Refusing Hitler and the Demands of Nazi Cinema

The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda desperately wanted Dietrich to return to Germany and become the glamorous face of Nazi propaganda and fascist culture. High-ranking Nazi officials like Joachim von Ribbentrop offered her lucrative deals to become Germany’s biggest movie star. Adolf Hitler was especially eager for Dietrich’s support. He was an ardent fan of her films and allegedly wanted her to become his mistress. Instead, Dietrich rejected and condemned the Third Reich publicly. She even called Hitler an idiot on a British radio broadcast. In response, the Nazi regime labeled her a traitor and banned all of her films and songs. 

Renouncing German Citizenship to Fund Refugee Escapes

Dietrich undermined the Nazis before World War II. In 1937, she renounced her German citizenship and created a fund with filmmaker Billy Wilder to help Jewish and other persecuted artists escape Nazi Germany. She donated her salary from the film Knight Without Armor (1937) to fund their evacuations, emigration costs, and new lives abroad.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Dietrich was one of the first celebrities to volunteer in the Allied war effort. She performed across the US in war bond tours. By 1943, she had sold more war bonds than any other star on tour. 

Broadcasting OSS Radio Propaganda to Demoralize Axis Soldiers

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) also recruited Dietrich to produce propaganda music. The precursor to the CIA, the OSS developed a plot to mix popular songs with anti-Nazi messages and speeches called the Muzak Project. Dietrich agreed to record famous songs in German that resonated with Axis troops for these broadcasts. She re-recorded songs like “Lili Marleen” and other beloved pieces like “Mean to Me” and “Time on My Hands.” The programs were broadcast into occupied territories to demoralize the German and Italian soldiers and make them question their loyalty to the Axis powers.

Risking Death on the Front Lines During Allied USO Tours

From 1944 to 1945, Dietrich became one of the most involved, resolute, and risky performers on the USO tours. Performing alongside Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, she sang for hundreds of thousands of soldiers to boost morale from North Africa to the front lines in France. Even military commanders like General George Patton were taken aback by how close to the front she was willing to go despite being a marked traitor in Germany.

Granted an honorary colonel title, Dietrich charmed military personnel with her cheeky comedy performances, fabulous outfits, and serenades. Other performers joked, “she was always trying to get us killed,” as she remained near the front regardless of nearby shelling, frostbite, or influenza. She danced on makeshift stages with no electricity, wore military boots, slept in tents, ate alongside the soldiers, attended their training, and often visited the wounded. 

In 1947, US President Harry Truman awarded Dietrich the Medal of Freedom for her wartime contributions. She stated that it was her proudest achievement and the most important thing she had ever done.

The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank, a teenage German Jew, while in hiding in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, is perhaps the most widely read account of the Holocaust. Quotes from Anne Frank’s diary and other writings are often part of official commemorations of the Holocaust and school curricula worldwide. Written under exceptional circumstances, Anne Frank’s account is a testament to perseverance and humanity in the face of the constant threat of persecution and death.

The Diary of Anne Frank

Anne Frank received her diary, a red-and-white plaid notebook, on her 13th birthday on June 12, 1943. At the time, the young Anne was living in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands with her older sister, Margot, and her parents, Otto and Edith Frank. Like many other German Jews, Otto had decided to leave Germany after Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933. In Amsterdam, Anne’s father opened a pectin firm, and, despite the initial financial struggles, the family began to feel at home, temporarily safe from the anti-Semitic persecution waged by the Nazi regime.

In the first entry, dated June 12, Anne expressed her hope to turn her diary into a close confidant: “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” At the time, the 13-year-old did not yet know that the plaid journal would become her lifeline in the following years, a way to try to make sense of the unprecedented historical circumstances she was forced to witness. In the two years spent in hiding, writing in her diary “kept her company and kept her sane,” as Nathan Zuckerman, the protagonist of Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), remarked.

Anne Frank and her family went into hiding on July 6, 1942, less than a month after Anne’s birthday, when Margot was notified of her imminent deportation to a work camp in Nazi Germany. “So there we were, Father, Mother and I, walking in the pouring rain, each of us with a schoolbag and a shopping bag filled to the brim with the most varied assortment of items,” wrote Anne in her diary.

After unsuccessfully trying to secure visas to immigrate to the US, Otto began turning an extension, the “secret annex,” on the second floor of his firm’s headquarters at 263 Prinsengracht into a hiding place. Otto’s business partner, Hermann van Pels, and his family and dentist Fritz Pfeffer later joined the Franks in the annex.

Until August 4, 1944, when a group of German soldiers discovered and arrested them, along with their Dutch helpers, Anne recorded her daily life in the annex, her fears about the present, and her hopes for the future in her diary. She wrote letters addressed to a real and imaginary group of friends, mainly Kitty, a character created by Dutch writer Cissy van Marxveldt in the Joop ter Heul book series.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on Nazi Rule

The Frank family’s hopes that the Netherlands could provide a stable refuge from the persecution and anti-Semitic violence of the Nazi regime shattered on May 10, 1940, when German troops crossed the country’s borders (even though the Dutch government had declared its neutrality) on their way to France. The Dutch army surrendered five days later, on May 15.

As the Nazi authorities took control of the country, the approximately 140,000 Jews living in the Netherlands had their rights and freedom gradually stripped away, as the Nazis, led by the Reichskommissar (Reich Commissioner) Arthur Seyss-Inquart, sought to exclude them from society. Soon, Jews were forced to wear a yellow star on their clothes with the word Jood, meaning “Jew” in Dutch.

In her diary, Anne reported the worsening situation in an entry written on June 20, 1942, and listed the long series of restrictions introduced by the Nazi authorities against the Jewish population:

“Our freedom was severely restricted by a series of anti-Jewish decrees: Jews were required to wear a yellow star; Jews were required to turn in their bicycles; Jews were forbidden to use street-cars; Jews were forbidden to ride in cars, even their own; Jews were required to do their shopping between 3 and 5 P.M.; Jews were required to frequent only Jewish-owned barbershops and beauty parlors; Jews were forbidden to be out on the streets between 8 P.M. and 6 A.M.; Jews were forbidden to attend theaters, movies or any other forms of entertainment; Jews were forbidden to use swimming pools, tennis courts, hockey fields or any other athletic fields; Jews were forbidden to go rowing; Jews were forbidden to take part in any athletic activity in public; … You couldn’t do this and you couldn’t do that, but life went on. Jacque always said to me, ‘I don’t dare do anything anymore, ’cause I’m afraid it’s not allowed.’”

The Dutch population initially protested against the anti-Semitic measures, organizing a general strike in February 1941 following the arrest of several hundred Jews. In the following years, however, the Nazis began to systematically round up the Jews residing in the Netherlands and send them to the Westerbork and Vught camps. From there, starting in the summer of 1942, most prisoners were transported to the concentration and death camps of Auschwitz and Sobibor in Nazi-occupied Poland.

The survival rate among the Dutch Jews was especially low, with only 27 percent of the deportees managing to return home after World War II. Adolf Eichmann, one of the main coordinators of the Holocaust, was favorably impressed by the efficiency of the deportation from the Netherlands, commenting, “In the beginning you could say that the trains from the Netherlands were really rolling; it was quite wonderful.”

In the “secret annex,” Anne Frank frequently commented on the unprecedented situation she lived in and the horrors of the Holocaust. “The world’s been turned upside down. The most decent people are being sent to concentration camps, prisons and lonely cells, while the scum of the earth rules over young and old, rich and poor,” she wrote on May 25, 1944.

On October 9, 1942, she had already confided to her imaginary friend Kitty:

“Dearest Kitty,

Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews. … If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die.”

Unbeknownst to Anne, in January 1942, 25 high-ranking Nazi officials had coordinated the so-called “Final solution to the Jewish question” at the Wannsee Conference, setting in motion the plan for the systematic deportation and extermination of European Jews.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on Self

Anne Frank’s diary is not only an eyewitness account of a young Jewish girl living under Nazi rule, but it is also a literary work depicting the emotional, psychological, and ethical maturation of a young woman and writer. While the earlier entries focus on her outings with friends to ice cream parlors and encounters with the first admirers, in hiding, Anne turned to introspection, reflecting on her identity and place in the world.

“Even though I’m only fourteen, I know what I want, I know who’s right and who’s wrong, I have my own opinions, ideas and principles, and though it may sound odd coming from a teenager, I feel I’m more of a person than a child, I feel I’m completely independent of others.”

March 17, 1944

“I know what I want, I have a goal, an opinion, I have a religion and love. Let me be myself and then I am satisfied. I know that I’m a woman, a woman with inward strength and plenty of courage.”

April 14, 1944

Some of the most widely known of Anne Frank’s quotes, these excerpts allow readers to get a glimpse of the young writer’s self-awareness regarding her personal development. During the long hours spent in careful silence to prevent any noise from betraying their whereabouts, Anne often turned to her diary for comfort and sanity. In his The Development of Anne Frank, John Berryman remarked how her unprecedented circumstances heightened Anne Frank’s “power of expression” and forced her to mature more quickly, drawing a parallel between her “conversion of the child into a person” to the conversion described by St. Augustine in his Confessions.

Anne Frank’s penchant for self-reflection also emerges from the following quote taken from the final entry on August 1, 1944:

“I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‘light-hearted’ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‘deeper’ Anne is too weak.”

Anne Frank’s Quotes on People

Anne Frank’s surprising belief in the goodness of humanity despite the horrors of the Holocaust is perhaps her most famous quote:

“It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.”

July 15, 1944

After World War II, when news of the death camps began to spread, Anne’s remark on human nature turned her diary into an emblem of prevailing humanity in the face of a systemic oppression specifically designed to negate her and her fellow Jews’ very right to exist. “Consider if this is a man,” famously asked Holocaust survivor Primo Levi in his poem, “Who toils in the mud/ Who knows no peace/ Who dies for half a loaf/ Who dies by a yes or a no.”

However, it would be mistaken to write off Anne’s quote as a naive faith in the goodness of humanity by a 15-year-old girl. Rather, her declaration is a desperate effort to find meaning in a suddenly meaningless world, and to hold on to hope amid a growing sense of doom.

In an essay titled Give!, Anne had already argued that “Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”

Reaffirmed against the backdrop of persecution, her faith becomes more poignant, a testament to her powerful voice that would resonate with so many generations of readers.

Anne Frank’s Quotes on the Future

During the two years spent in hiding, Anne Frank and the other inhabitants of the “secret annex” alternated between despair and hope regarding their future after the war. While news of the Allies’ advance increased their optimism, the forced proximity, lack of privacy, and frequent quarrels led to frustration and demoralization.

In a series of entries from 1943, Anne expressed her mounting dread, comparing her plans for the future to a “castle in the air.” A couple of quotes from October and November give readers a sense of her struggle against despair and emphasize the power of art:

“I wander from room to room, climb up and down the stairs and feel like a songbird whose wings have been ripped off and who keeps hurling itself against the bars of its dark cage.”

October 29, 1943

“I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we’re standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We’re surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other.”

November 8, 1943

Stuck in a present of constant danger, Anne saw her writing as a way to reaffirm her identity and secure her memory against the threat of erasure.

“I want to go on living even after my death! And therefore I am grateful to God for giving me this gift, this possibility of developing myself and of writing, of expressing all that is in me!”

April 5, 1944

In April 1944, Anne had already begun editing her diary, deleting some previous entries and adding some new ones. Her plan to publish her writing after the war dates back to March 1944, when she heard a speech by the Dutch Minister of Education in exile exhorting his fellow citizens to document their wartime experiences for posterity. For the young Anne, writing then became an act of self-assertion in the face of a hostile force that sought to annihilate her and her family.

Anne’s plan for her future tragically died with her in February 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where she and her sister Margot contracted typhus. Her diary and other writings, however, survived the war thanks to Miep Gies, who kept Anne’s journal and other papers after the Franks’ arrest in 1944. After the war, she returned them to Otto, the only inhabitant of the “secret annex” to survive the Holocaust. Moved by his daughter’s writings, Otto published them in 1947 with the title Het Achterhuis (The Secret Annex), the title Anne herself had chosen.

Today, the Diary of a Young Girl has been translated into over 75 languages, making Anne Frank a symbol of perseverance and her writings a “bid for immortality.”

On August 23, 1927, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two Italian-born anarchists, were electrocuted at Charlestown State Prison in Massachusetts. The same day, an international wave of mass demonstrations protested their death. Sacco and Vanzetti had been arrested in 1920 and accused of a robbery and double murder in Braintree, Massachusetts. What initially appeared to be an open-and-shut case quickly became one of the most famous trials of the 20th century. Known as the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the trial divided America, exposing the inequalities and biases of the US justice system.

A Robbery in Massachusetts: The Origins of the Sacco & Vanzetti Case

On April 15, 1920, at around 3 p.m., Frederick A. Parmenter, a clerk at the Slater and Morrill shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts, was carrying the payroll across the company’s courtyard. Alessandro Berardelli, a guard, was accompanying him. Before they could reach the factory building, they were assaulted by two armed men, who opened fire, killing both employees. After grabbing the cash, approximately $15,000, the two gunmen fled the scene in a dark Buick with some other accomplices. Some eyewitnesses later described them as “Italian-looking.”

Bridgewater Police Chief Michael E. Stewart, who was investigating a failed robbery at a shoe factory in Bridgewater, soon became convinced that local radicals had committed both crimes to fund their subversive activities. In particular, he suspected the involvement of Mario “Mike” Buda, a known Italian-born anarchist later credited with the Wall Street bombing of September 1920.

Believing that the perpetrators had used Buda’s car as a second get-away vehicle, Stewart set a trap that led to the arrest of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti on May 5. Vanzetti was also charged with the robbery attempt in Bridgewater. Upon their arrest, the two Italian-Americans were carrying guns similar to those found on the crime scene. The payroll stolen from Parmenter, however, was never found.

During their first interrogations, Sacco and Vanzetti lied to the police, fearing their arrest was politically motivated. The suspicious death of fellow anarchist Andrea Salsedo, who fell from the window of the Bureau of Investigation in New York on May 3, had alarmed other Italian-born anarchists, who feared Salsedo might have shared information on his network with the authorities.

The First Red Scare

Considering the tense political atmosphere of the few years before their arrest, Sacco and Vanzetti’s fears were not unfounded. Indeed, toward the end of 1919, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had carried out a series of mass arrests and deportations of hundreds of individuals suspected of having radical sympathies. Known as the Palmer Raids, the anti-radical measures marked the climax of the so-called First Red Scare, a period characterized by widespread hysteria and paranoia fueled by fears of an imminent communist upheaval.

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia alarmed American authorities, creating anxiety concerning a possible communist conspiracy aiming to overthrow the government. The end of World War I and the social unrest that followed increased the general paranoia. In particular, Palmer directed his anti-radical repression against recent immigrants and foreign-born activists.

Between 1919 and 1920, the newly founded General Intelligence Division, led by a young J. Edgar Hoover, rounded up thousands of alleged radicals, labor union members, and “undesirable” aliens. Often carried out in violation of civil liberties, the raids also targeted several Italian-born immigrants, including Luigi Galleani, the charismatic editor of Cronaca Sovversiva (Subversive Chronicle). Galleani, the promoter of a violent “propaganda of the deed,” was deported to Italy in June 1919. Among his followers, known as Galleanists, were Sacco and Vanzetti.

Who Were Sacco and Vanzetti?

Sacco and Vanzetti emigrated to the US in 1908. However, their paths crossed only around 1916, when they were both involved with Galleani’s anarchist group. Bartolomeo Vanzetti was born in 1888 in Villafalletto, a small town in the Piedmont region, northern Italy. In his autobiography The Story of a Proletarian Life, published in 1923, Vanzetti wrote that he “loved study,” adding that “my earliest memories are of prizes won in school examinations.” After working for years in various pastry and bakery shops, Vanzetti left for the US following his mother’s death.

After he arrived at Ellis Island, Vanzetti worked several jobs. Then, he settled in Plymouth, where he joined the local anarchist group, taking part in rallies as a speaker. He also subscribed and contributed to Cronaca Sovversiva. In his biography, Vanzetti later described himself as an “anarchist-communist,” expressing his belief that “communism is the most humane form of social contract.” When he was not working, Vanzetti sought to further his education by reading a wide range of books, from political literature to Dante’s Divine Comedy.

In 1917, Vanzetti fled to Mexico to avoid being drafted into the US Army. He crossed the border with other Galleanists, including Nicola Sacco. Born in Torremaggiore, a town in the southern Italian region of Apulia, as Ferdinando, Sacco emigrated to the US in April 1908, just two months before Vanzetti.

In 1909, after doing odd jobs, Sacco trained to become a skilled craftsman in the shoe industry. In 1912, he married Rosa Zambelli. Around the same time, he joined Galleani’s anarchist group, participating in fundraisings and distributing pamphlets. Sacco would later describe anarchism as a movement promoting “equality, justice, comradeship.”

The Trial of Sacco & Vanzetti

The trial against Sacco and Vanzetti began on May 31, 1921 at the Dedham Superior Court, the courthouse of Dedham prison where the defendants were incarcerated. In June 1920, Vanzetti had already been sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison for the failed robbery at the shoe factory in Bridgewater.

In the same years, when the investigators were still gathering evidence against the two Italian-Americans for the Braintree’s robbery and murders, the Boston America, a newspaper owned by William Randolph Hearst, quoting the prosecutors, announced that obtaining a conviction would be “comparatively easy.” The prediction turned out to be wrong.

As Frederick G. Katzmann, the prosecutor, and Fred Moore, the chief defense counsel, started questioning eyewitnesses, they provided conflicting and confusing statements about the whereabouts of the defendants on the day of the robbery. Indeed, Katzmann built his case primarily around ballistics evidence, calling to the stand Captain William H. Proctor, who maintained that the bullet that killed the security guard was fired from Sacco’s .32 Colt pistol. However, Captain Proctor later recanted his statement.

Besides presenting evidence against Sacco and Vanzetti, the prosecution also emphasized their political affiliation. Prior to the trial, the press had already highlighted the two men’s affiliation with the Galleanists, an anarchist group suspected of having carried out a series of bombings in 1919. Many newspapers, for example, reported that the police found “alleged Bolshevik literature” in Vanzetti’s bungalow. Reporters also announced that Vanzetti “admits to being a radical of the most pronounced form.”

At a time when xenophobia was widespread in American society, the defendants’ immigrant background was also at the center of the proceedings. In his final address to the jury members, for example, Judge Webster Thayer appealed to their “supreme American loyalty.” Several eyewitnesses also stressed the fact that Sacco and Vanzetti were “foreign looking.” In the previous trial against Vanzetti, a 14-year-old boy even claimed that “the way he ran I could tell he was a foreigner.”

From the Appeals to the Execution

On July 14, 1921, Sacco and Vanzetti were found guilty of robbery and murder. Over the following years, their defense team filed several motions asking for a retrial as new evidence began to surface.

In 1923, for example, William G. Thompson, the new defense lawyer, asked for a new trial after an acquaintance of Walter Ripley, the jury foreman, reported that his friend made biased remarks before the beginning of the proceedings: “Damn them, they ought to hang anyway,” reportedly exclaimed Ripley during a conversation. Two years later, Celestino Madeiros, an inmate at Charlestown, the prison where Sacco was held, confessed to the robbery and murders in Braintree. Judge Thayer, however, refused to grant the defense’s repeated requests to reopen the trial.

In 1926 and 1927, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court supported the judge’s ruling against the defense team’s appeals. Thus, on April 9, 1927, Webster Thayer sentenced Sacco and Vanzetti to death.

“I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian,” accused Vanzetti in his statement to the court.

A month before, from the pages of Atlantic Monthly, Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law School professor and future Supreme Court judge, had also famously condemned Judge Thayer’s behavior, describing his written refusal of a new trial as “a farrago of misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations.”

However, in the summer of 1927, a committee headed by Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell cleared Judge Thayer of any wrongdoings and biases, claiming that his alleged dislike for the defendants, expressed in conversations outside the courtroom, “did not affect his conduct at the trial or the opinions of the jury.”

In the summer of 1927, the defense’s last appeals were denied. As a result, Sacco and Vanzetti were executed on August 23.

A Global Event

“This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man as we now do by dying,” declared Vanzetti in an interview in May 1927. Indeed, at the time of their execution, Sacco and Vanzetti were already working-class heroes.

“There’s no story in it. … Just a couple of wops in a jam,” a New York Call reporter sent to cover the trial had written. He was wrong. Soon, the Sacco and Vanzetti case turned into a global event, with radicals, labor activists, workers, and intellectuals organizing rallies and demonstrations for the two Italian-Americans in the US, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, and even China.

Various factors contributed to transforming the case into an international cause célèbre and labor movement, including the geopolitical context, the increasing visibility of the masses and labor activists, and the size of the Italian diaspora. Carlo Tresca, an Italian activist, and Fred Moore also increased the Sacco and Vanzetti case’s visibility, reaching out to their vast network of radicals and union leaders.

Over the course of the seven-year-long legal battle, several renowned intellectuals joined the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, founded by Italian-born anarchist Aldo Felicani in May 1920. Many others appealed to the American authorities. Among those who spoke in support of the two anarchists were John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Ernst Hemingway, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, H. G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and Diego Rivera. Even Benito Mussolini instructed the Italian ambassador to the US to negotiate the release of Sacco and Vanzetti.

During and after the trial, a wave of protests broke out in many cities and countries. In October 1921, the American ambassador in Paris received a mail bomb. Huge crowds gathered in front of American consulates and embassies in London, Rome, Le Havre, Basel, and Santiago. In Latin America, the Sacco and Vanzetti case turned into a movement against American imperialism and Wall Street. In France, it was described as a second “Dreyfus Affair.” In August 1927, as the date of the execution drew near, the protests intensified.

“Here’s to You Nicola and John”: The Sacco & Vanzetti Case’s Legacy

The resonance of the Sacco and Vanzetti case did not end with the two Italian-Americans’ execution. In the 1930s, numerous books, poems, plays, and songs were written about their trial in America, Latin America, and Europe. In 1929, Chinese writer Ba Jin, who had corresponded with Vanzetti, described him as his “mentor” in his novel Miewang (Destruction).

In the 1960s, as social and cultural movements challenged the status quo, the Sacco and Vanzetti case inspired a new generation of writers and artists. In particular, the Ballad of Sacco and Vanzetti, written by Joan Baez and Ennio Morricone, became an international anthem, especially after Italian director Giuliano Montaldo featured it in his 1971 movie Sacco e Vanzetti.

Over the years, the Sacco and Vanzetti case has also continued to be at the center of a heated debate among jurists, with experts trying to prove the innocence or guilt of the two men. Questioned on whether immortality was desirable, American writer Ferris Greenslet jokingly answered: “I almost think it is if only to get at the truth of the Sacco-Vanzetti case.”

Though scholars have yet to come to a consensus on whether the two men really were guilty, they agree that Sacco and Vanzetti did not receive a fair trial. In 1977, on the 50th anniversary of the execution, Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis issued a proclamation denouncing the biases of the American judicial system of the 1920s. In the late 1930s, the uproar caused by the Sacco and Vanzetti case led Massachusetts’ judicial council to introduce a series of reforms aimed at preventing miscarriages of justice.

In the early years of the Soviet Union, the Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921 proved a pivotal test for the new Bolshevik regime. The revolt was sparked by extreme dissatisfaction with the Bolshevik policy of War Communism and was centered around the naval fortress of Kronstadt, close to present-day Saint Petersburg. Although the Red Army swiftly dealt with this revolt, the actions at Kronstadt had a lasting effect on the trajectory of the USSR.

Prelude to the Kronstadt Rebellion

Towards the end of 1920, with the Russian Civil War drawing to a close, the recently instituted Bolshevik government of the Soviet Union was faced with rebuilding a nation ravaged by conflict and revolution. Despite the victory of the Red Army over the White forces led by Pyotr Wrangel, the Bolshevik’s control over the nation was not complete. Peasant uprisings in the countryside against communist power were worsened by the hardships of the war and by the Bolshevik policy of War Communism, which led to famine, disease, and a shortage of basic goods. Furthermore, the policy of forced grain requisitioning led to a deep resentment against the Bolsheviks among the rural classes, and towards the end of the Civil War, a large number of peasants refused to work.

Resistance towards the Bolsheviks was not focused solely on rural areas, as large urban centers such as Petrograd (formerly Saint Petersburg), which had previously formed the backbone of Soviet power, now began to rebel openly. In response to a reduction in the bread ration, industrial workers went on strike and demanded an end to War Communism and the harsh policies that had been imposed during the fight against the White Army. The naval base at Kronstadt and the rebellion that occurred there in March 1921 culminated in a nationwide feeling of dissatisfaction with Vladimir Lenin’s government.

Workers Demand the End of War Communism

Towards the end of January 1921, the Soviet central authorities in Moscow announced a nationwide reduction in the daily bread ration for those working in the major cities. The Bolshevik government blamed the harsh winter and field shortages for the reduction in the food supply. The working populations of Moscow and Petrograd reacted angrily to the new policy. By February, workers in the capital began organizing meetings that demanded an end to the policies of War Communism and a return to paid labor. These initial protests were dealt with harshly by the internal security forces of the USSR.

As the worker’s uprisings in Moscow began to die down, the situation in the second-largest city of the Soviet Union, Petrograd, became much worse. In Petrograd, severe food shortages had caused more than fifty percent of industrial factories to close down entirely, and workers held public meetings where they voiced their demands. Bolshevik authorities responded by mobilizing the Red Army to disperse protesters, declaring martial law, and banning large meetings. However, the response within the Kremlin was not entirely united, as elements within the Bolsheviks were divided over how to deal with the worker’s demands for an end to War Communism.

The Kronstadt Rebellion Begins

Since the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, the sailors stationed at the Kronstadt naval base, just outside Petrograd, had been supportive of Lenin’s forces and even fought alongside elements of the Red Army during the Civil War. However, the naval forces within Kronstadt were suspicious of the growing centralized power that had taken root in the Soviet Union and were particularly affected by the harsh policies of War Communism. The sailors were forced to live in squalid conditions with poor supplies, limited medical assistance, and a lack of fuel for the heating and maintenance of the Baltic Fleet.

In response to the government crackdown on protesters in Petrograd, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base held an emergency meeting in late February. Decorated officers and the crew of the Petropavlovsk and Sevastopol warships drafted a list of fifteen demands, which they presented to the Bolshevik authorities. Among these demands were a call for new elections, increased freedom of speech, and an end to the harsh policies associated with War Communism.

While the sailors at Kronstadt saw their demands as a realistic reflection of the same requests that had been made by protesters in Moscow and Petrograd, the Bolshevik leadership reacted harshly and saw the events at Kronstadt as a direct threat to the central power in Moscow. Soon after the demands were issued, the naval officers at Kronstadt were labeled counterrevolutionaries and enemies of the state. The events at Kronstadt escalated quickly, and by March 2, the island was under direct control of the sailors who had taken local Bolshevik representatives hostage, ensuring their demands were treated seriously. In addition, they called for new elections.

The Bolsheviks Respond

While the rebels at Kronstadt had openly revolted against Bolshevik centralized power, they did not do so in a violent manner. In fact, the early negotiations between the sailors and local Bolsheviks were entirely peaceful, and no local representatives were harmed. However, as the sailors had begun calls for another revolution that would restore the ideals of 1917 and limit the further consolidation of power in the hands of the Bolsheviks, the Kremlin saw the rebellion as a serious threat to their regime. Leading Communists in Petrograd, such as Leon Trotsky and Zinoviev, issued ultimatums to the rebels calling for an end to anti-government activity. Authorities in Moscow also spread propaganda among the local people, which accused the sailors of being in league with the White Army.

The situation inside the Kronstadt fortress was increasingly dire. While the rebels had gained a great deal of support from sympathetic groups across the Soviet Union, there was no united uprising in support. On the contrary, opposition groups such as the Mensheviks, socialists, and military cadets were too internally divided to offer much support. Therefore, the rebels at Kronstadt were faced with the prospect of holding back a potential military assault from the Bolshevik security forces completely alone. While their position was heavily fortified, the rebels faced dire shortages of ammunition, food, and basic supplies. In contrast, the Bolsheviks led by Mikhail Tukhachevsky were well-equipped and reinforced by troops from the local Cheka.

The Bolshevik Assault on Kronstadt

The Bolshevik assault against Kronstadt began on March 7 and involved over sixty thousand troops. Despite their overwhelming numbers, the initial assault was unsuccessful, and the harsh winter conditions coupled with the heavily defended position of the rebels led to an early retreat. While the Bolsheviks continued bombarding the island with artillery strikes and bombing runs, the defenders were deeply entrenched. The failure of the initial assault led to plummeting morale among the Red Army troops, and a number of officers actually defected to the rebels.

However, as the siege on Kronstadt continued, the harsh winter weather and low supplies slowly deteriorated the rebel’s resolve, and a final Bolshevik assault was planned for March 17. Tukhachevsky led a force of fifty thousand Red Army troops that attacked from three directions as artillery barrages damaged the rebel ships, Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk. By the following day, Bolshevik forces had taken control over most of Kronstadt, and the last pockets of resistance were stamped out. Despite their victory, the Red Army lost more than ten thousand troops in the assault against Kronstadt as opposed to the reported rebel losses of just six hundred. Moreover, not all the rebel sailors were captured during the assault as thousands had fled across the frozen Baltic Sea towards Finland, where they claimed refugee status.

The Aftermath of the Kronstadt Rebellion

Following the defeat of the rebels at the Kronstadt naval base, the Bolshevik officer Pavel Dybenko was put in charge of the island. With the help of local authorities, he purged all remaining rebel forces from the base and renamed the battleships. The rebel sailors who remained at Kronstadt were either put on trial or sent into exile across the country. The prominent leaders of the rebellion who were captured by the Bolsheviks were either executed or sentenced to harsh prison sentences that were carried out in forced labor camps. Those rebels who were lucky enough to avoid capture and find refuge in Finland did fare much better. The Finnish government, wary of harboring such a large number of rebellious naval officers, sought to resettle the refugees in neighboring countries and even tried to arrange amnesty for their return to the Soviet Union.

None of the demands that had sparked the Kronstadt rebellion were met. The Bolsheviks continued with the policy of War Communism, and a number of left-wing groups that had expressed varying levels of support for the rebels were brutally suppressed. In the end, the greatest consequence that the Kronstadt rebellion had upon the Soviet Union was to accelerate the authoritarian trends that had triggered the uprising in the first place.

The Legacy of the Kronstadt Rebellion

According to historical accounts, the leader of the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin, saw the Kronstadt rebellion as a turning point in the history of the Soviet Union. It served as a key factor in further tightening his party’s authoritarian rule. The rebellion first caused dissidents to be treated with extreme violence, and groups that were previously tolerated were outlawed completely. Moreover, the structure of the Soviet military was completely altered, and discipline was increased dramatically.

Some have seen Lenin’s decision to replace War Communism with his New Economic Policy as being directly influenced by the Kronstadt rebellion and the worker’s uprisings that preceded it. However, this was not the case. The Bolsheviks had begun drafting the NEP long before the revolt and had merely accelerated its adoption because of it. One way in which the Kronstadt rebellion influenced Lenin is that it swayed him to set aside his ambitions for a global proletarian revolution that would spread communism in Western Europe. Instead, he focused on domestic policies that would help prevent further dissent. Most significantly, all the events that took place at Kronstadt and their aftermath signaled a major change in Russian history. Libertarian socialism was steadily replaced by bureaucratic repression, which evolved into Stalinism, a brutal system that led to the Moscow Trials and eventually Stalin’s Great Purge.

The history of British politics is messy and inconsistent. While some politicians were exceptionally talented and efficient, others were embarrassingly incompetent. Archibald Primrose, who was also known as Lord Rosebery or the Earl of Rosebery, was one of the latter. Having enjoyed a remarkably privileged upbringing, Rosebery’s gateway to the world of politics was relatively simple. Yet his time as the British prime minister was disastrous. After ascending to the position in March 1894, he made a series of blunders and cemented himself as one of the worst politicians in British history.

Archibald Primrose’s Luxury Upbringing

Archibald Primrose was born into a Scottish aristocratic family during the early stages of the Victorian era on May 7, 1847, in Charles Street, London. His father, Lord Dalmeny, was a politician who had worked as a Member of Parliament for the Whigs, representing the constituency of Stirling Burghs between 1832 and 1847. He had also been Lord of the Admiralty under Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria’s first prime minister. Primrose’s mother, Lady Dalmeny, was a historian and genealogist and the only daughter of the fourth Earl of Stanhope.

Like many well-known British politicians, Primrose experienced the one-two punch of Eton and Oxford, with both institutions offering the finest education in the land. He entered the former in 1860 at the age of thirteen, quickly demonstrating his mighty intellect and romantic love of history.

At nineteen years of age, Primrose arrived at Christ Church, Oxford, to read history. Alongside his friend Randolph Churchill (the father of future Prime Minister Winston Churchill), Primrose was a member of the infamous Bullingdon Club, a group known for its rebellious antics and foul debauchery.

Primrose, despite his intellect, wasn’t a model student. In his first term, he refused to attend obligatory morning chapel, and he even clashed with author and mathematician Lewis Carroll (who penned Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) after he failed to attend one of his lectures.

Following his grandfather’s death on March 3, 1868, Primrose inherited an impressive title: Lord Rosebery.

A Passion for Horses

Rosebery inherited a vast amount of wealth from his grandfather, for his own father had died when he was a child. He also inherited a seat in the House of Lords, giving him an easy (and unearned) pathway into the world of politics.

But politics wasn’t Rosebery’s primary concern as a young man. Instead, he jumped at the opportunity to become a racehorse owner for the first time. Fixated by his new hobby (and with plenty of wealth to fund it), Primrose left Oxford without earning a degree, as undergraduates weren’t allowed to own a horse. When it came to horseracing, the future prime minister was confident about his chances. But this early optimism was misguided, for the horses performed poorly in competitions, losing Primrose a substantial amount of money. Despite these early failings, Primrose’s passion never diminished, and he found success later on, winning the Epsom Derby three times.

Other pastimes included gambling, collecting rare pieces of art and literature, and entertaining guests at his estates in England and Scotland. Already blessed with a giant fortune, Primrose’s wealth increased once again following his marriage to Hannah de Rothschild, who was known as the richest woman in Britain. The affluent couple had four children: two sons and two daughters.

The Ups and Downs of the Liberal Party

Having made his maiden speech in the House of Lords in 1871, Rosebery was very critical of Benjamin Disraeli’s Conservative government (1874 to 1880). He was particularly hostile to the government’s handling of foreign affairs, including their perceived indifference to the Ottoman massacre of Bulgarians during the April Uprising of 1876.

William Gladstone, the leader of the Liberal Party and arch-rival of Disraeli, was also highly critical of the Conservative government. He made a series of speeches criticizing Britain’s foreign policy, collectively known as the Midlothian Campaign. Rosebery was the primary organizer of this event, which was essential to the Liberal election victory in 1880.

In 1881, Gladstone brought Rosebery into his government as an under-secretary at the Home Office with special responsibilities for Scottish business. Rosebery hoped to move up into a Cabinet position, but Gladstone—who appeared disinterested in Scottish affairs—was not forthcoming, prompting Rosebery to resign in 1883.

However, he joined Gladstone’s Cabinet in 1885 as the Commissioner of the Board of Works and Lord Privy Seal. A year later, he ascended to the position of foreign secretary in Gladstone’s third administration. But he didn’t hold this new position for long owing to the collapse of Gladstone’s government.

The problem for the Liberal Party was the Irish Home Rule Bill, which many Liberal politicians opposed, for they were concerned about the north-south divide in Ireland. They believed the Home Rule Bill would be a disaster for Irish Protestants in the north, for they would be outnumbered by the Catholic majority.

The division inside the Liberal Party triggered the next general election, and Lord Salisbury’s Conservative Party emerged victorious. The Liberal Party lost power, adding to the personal tragedy Rosebery suffered in 1890 when his wife died from typhoid, leaving him devastated.

A Failed Premiership

The Liberal Party returned to power in the summer of 1892, and Rosebery held the post of Foreign Secretary once again.

Supported by the Irish Nationals, the Liberal Party commanded a majority in the House of Commons. But the schism was still too great, and the Irish Home Rule Bill wasn’t passed. Following Gladstone’s resignation, Rosebery became prime minister on March 3, 1894. With a divided party in the House of Commons and a small number of Liberals in the House of Lords, passing legislation wasn’t going to be easy.

In British politics, the chancellor of the exchequer is the prime minister’s right-hand man and the second-most important person in the country. But unfortunately for Rosebery, he had a significant clash with his chancellor, Sir William Harcourt.

The source of the clash was inheritance tax. While Harcourt favored more radical reform and taxes on inherited estates, the prime minister was concerned that the new legislation would constitute class warfare. Given Rosebery’s vast wealth, many saw him as a rich man who didn’t want to be taxed.

Rosebery also made scathing comments about the House of Lords but was unclear about any potential reforms. As well as causing confusion inside the Cabinet, his hostility toward the House of Lords alarmed Queen Victoria, who was generally against radical reform (she was even against votes for women!).

Rosebery made another fatal error when he signed the Anglo-Belgian Treaty and leased land in the Upper Nile to the King of the Belgians. The French were not happy because the new arrangement blocked their access to the Congo. This created international tension between the two imperial powers.

With all these blunders mounting up, the Liberal Party’s time in power was limited, and their leader became increasingly haggard. Rosebery started to suffer from insomnia and even had a nervous breakdown at one point.

Defeat and Departure

Following a defeat in the House of Commons concerning army supplies, Rosebery knew it was time to step down. He and his ministers resigned, and Queen Victoria invited Lord Salisbury, the Conservative leader, to form a new government. A general election was held in July 1895, and the Conservatives thrashed the Liberals, with the former earning over four hundred seats and the latter earning less than two hundred.

Despite this major defeat, Rosebery remained the leader of the Liberal Party, though not for long. He made yet another blunder, as he was reluctant to condemn the Turkish attacks against the Armenians, unlike the rest of his party, who were outraged by the violence. Having resigned from the leadership of the Liberal Party in October 1896, Rosebery gradually distanced himself from politics, though he did support Britain’s role in the Second Boer War (1899-1902) as a member of the Liberal Imperialists.

In the final decades of his life, Rosebery concentrated on his horses and wrote several political biographies of well-known figures from British history, including Oliver Cromwell, William Pitt the Elder, and William Pitt the Younger.

Archibald Primrose’s Death and Legacy

Rosebery suffered a stroke in November 1918 and was left partially disabled. He clung to life for over a decade but eventually died on May 21, 1929, at the age of 82. Despite all his wealth, Rosebery is a somewhat sympathetic figure. He inherited a tough political situation that would have been difficult for any statesman. He also suffered two personal tragedies. In addition to the aforementioned death of his spouse, his son Neil died in 1917 while fighting in Palestine.

At the same time, his political record is abysmal. Rosebery struggled to control the Cabinet and had a significant disagreement with his chancellor when it came to inheritance tax. He also alarmed Queen Victoria with his views on the House of Lords and racked up international tensions by signing the Anglo-Belgian Treaty.

Rosebery may have had access to a top-tier education and an extraordinary amount of wealth, but neither of these things helped when it came to the running of the country. While there will never be a consensus about the worst prime minister in British history, Rosebery will always be part of the conversation.

During the 20th century, Latin America played host to multiple dictatorships and authoritarian governments that profoundly shaped its institutions and political landscape. In the context of the Cold War and ideological polarization, its closeness to the United States resulted in support for various military dictatorships. Only Mexico, Costa Rica, and Belize managed to maintain relatively stable democratic institutions. These dictatorships left open wounds that impact the region to this day. Learn more about the lesser-known Latin American dictatorships that shaped Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Panama.

1. The Duvaliers in Haiti (1957-1986)

In 1963, the outlook in Haiti was grim: a hurricane had destroyed nearly everything, relief funds were not distributed, strikes were widespread, and a military president abused his power by imprisoning opponents and shutting down newspapers. Hope was renewed during the elections when François Duvalier, a shy rural doctor and advocate for the poor, won. People supported him because they felt that, at last, someone was looking out for them, earning him the paternal nickname “Papa Doc.” However, it wasn’t long before he forgot his roots and promises and began to wield power ruthlessly, without any justification or even an ideology.

He focused on amassing vast personal wealth and eliminating any opposition. He organized popular militias known as the Tonton Macoute, named after a bogeyman in Haitian mythology. These were death squads responsible for disappearing regime opponents. They committed countless murders—some by stoning and burning their victims alive—as well as rapes and robberies. Duvalier also fostered a cult of personality, using the voodoo religion and instilling fear based on popular beliefs in order to control the population.

Near the end of his life, the self-proclaimed “president for life” amended the constitution to appoint his 19-year-old son, “Baby Doc,” as president. His father was more cruel and repressive, while he was openly more corrupt and flaunted a luxurious lifestyle. The situation began to unravel due to international pressures, the withdrawal of U.S. military and economic support, the strengthening of the opposition, and popular protests and movements, culminating in a coup that finally ended the dictatorship in 1986.

2. Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic (1930-1961)

In the army, Rafael Trujillo, born into a large, poor family, found a way to get ahead, eventually becoming a general in the Armed Forces. In 1930, during a revolt against President Horacio Vázquez, he took advantage of the situation to present himself as a presidential candidate. He used his power in the armed forces to violently force other candidates to resign. Throughout his government, he continued this strategy of violence and repression: he prohibited political parties and forced all citizens to join the official party.

He established a cult of personality, promoting an excessive adoration of himself: he renamed Santo Domingo “Ciudad Trujillo,” filling the country with monuments in his honor and streets with his name. He even considered himself a saint and wanted all Dominicans to place his picture next to the altar of Jesus.

The bloodiest event during his dictatorship was the infamous 1937 Parsley Massacre.  Over four days, more than 20,000 Haitians, including women and children, were killed, mostly using machetes and knives. The massacre’s perpetrators would test the “Dominicanhood” of their potential victims through the pronunciation of the word “parsley,” giving the event its name. Trujillo promoted an anti-Haitian ideology and covered up the massacre through fear, silencing local witnesses.

His regime ended after an ambush on the road by a group of Dominican armed forces and former collaborators armed with weapons provided by the CIA. He was shot sixty times.

3. Somoza Family in Nicaragua (1936-1979)

From a wealthy background, Anastasio Somoza made his way as a businessman and in politics. He served as governor, consul, foreign minister, and head of the National Guard. He took advantage of this last position to consolidate his power through political persecution. He perpetrated a coup d’état and managed to stay at the helm of Nicaragua for nearly two decades until he was assassinated by the poet Rigoberto López, a supporter of Nicaraguan freedom and revolution. However, freedom did not last long, as the regime soon fell into the hands of his sons: Luis and Anastasio.

During the Somoza dynasty, the Nicaraguan state, economy, and infrastructure were modernized. But the period was also marked by repression and inequality. The concentration of power and national wealth in the hands of the Somozas was notable. The government was oriented exclusively to their personal interests, with no respect for institutions and no limits. Over four decades, the family accumulated enormous wealth through corruption, corporate bribery, industrial monopolies, land appropriation, and diversion of foreign aid. They owned about 23% of the land in Nicaragua and, in terms of wealth, it is speculated they held the equivalent of half of Nicaragua’s debt and 33% of the GDP.

The regime’s own corruption, particularly after the 1972 earthquake, generated deep discontent that, along with human rights violations, the strengthening of the opposition, armed insurgency, and international isolation, accelerated its downfall in 1979.

4. Carlos Castillo Armas in Guatemala (1954-1957)

In the mid-20th century, 76% of Guatemalans owned less than 10% of the land, while just 22% controlled nearly three-quarters. Leftist President Jacobo Árbenz promoted progressive policies, particularly agrarian reform, redistributing uncultivated lands, which affected the interests of large U.S. corporations like the United Fruit Company.

In response, the U.S. designed a program called PBSUCCESS, which, with the help of the CIA and a budget of $2.7 million for “psychological warfare and political action” and “subversion,” among other components of a small paramilitary war, launched a brutal invasion specifically designed to instill panic and draw the population and military to their side before defeating them. They accused Árbenz of being a communist, although his policies were quite moderate and inspired by Abraham Lincoln. Leadership was turned over to exiled General Carlos Castillo Armas, who had previously attempted to overthrow the government.

During his rule, a repressive and conservative state was consolidated, aligned with U.S. interests, which supported him economically and militarily. In a climate of censorship, particularly McCarthyism, he persecuted trade unionists, intellectuals, and opponents. He strengthened his relationship with the Church as an ally in the anti-communist struggle, dissolved Congress, and repealed the 1945 constitution, reversing key social reforms.

He was assassinated with two bullets in the presidential house in 1957. He left a legitimacy crisis, internal strife, and a radicalization of the opposition, laying the groundwork for a vicious cycle of violence and repression and a 36-year civil war.

5. Manuel Antonio Noriega in Panama (1983-1989)

Originating from a poor neighborhood, Noriega made his way to power through the armed forces, becoming a close informant and collaborator of the CIA. In this way, he accumulated power and wove his web of influence. He was never elected president; however, he exercised de facto power by re-electing himself as Commander of the National Guard from 1983 to 1989.

Noriega had an ambiguous relationship with the United States; at times, he was an ally and informant, but he was also an adversary, selling confidential information to Washington’s political enemies, such as drug cartels. While passing secrets about Cuba to the U.S., he sold thousands of Panamanian passports to Fidel Castro for $5,000 each, which were to be used by agents from the island and possibly from Soviet nations as well. He was also heavily involved in drug trafficking, facilitating the drug trade and collaborating with cartels.

It was difficult to know which side he was on; his thirst for power led him to do anything to obtain it, until he ultimately became a tyrant. Tensions with the U.S. peaked in the late 1980s when Noriega refused to cede power. Operation Just Cause was carried out to extradite him; he was subsequently convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime, receiving a 40-year prison sentence. He died in prison. When Capitol Hill cut military and economic aid to Panama’s regime, it fell into debt default, and its economy contracted by 20%.

Latin America’s Legacy of Authoritarianism

Almost all dictatorships in Latin America maintained a close relationship with the U.S., particularly due to the prevailing anti-communist climate in the region. The U.S., as the predominant power, manipulated the politics of the other countries as part of its geopolitical strategy to ensure its political and economic interests, using the fear of communism as a pretext. Many leaders were puppets, replaced and discarded when they ceased to be useful. This manipulation was also reflected in the international image, promoting narratives that legitimized these regimes while the reality, reflecting a struggle for social justice, was systematically silenced.

This had profound repercussions within these countries, as most were going through periods of economic crises, ideological polarization, and, above all, political instability, marked by a lack of democratic institutions and effective checks on power. This institutional void allowed for numerous coups, and in the absence of checks on power, cycles of violence and repression were perpetuated. The armed forces, seen as guarantors of order and stability, gained legitimacy; moreover, anti-communism justified repression as a measure to safeguard national security.

Over time, the military consolidated their positions within their spheres of influence through their connections with the U.S., access to arms, and control over economic resources. This power allowed them to accumulate wealth through corrupt practices, reinforcing their interest in maintaining power while undermining democratic institutions and human rights. A small elite group enriched themselves at the expense of the suffering of the rest, generating not only economic inequality but also a legacy of impunity.

During the era of the “Wild West” in the United States, as people expanded westward in search of opportunities and new life, many communities had to do the best they could with medical care. The results ranged from the hilariously awful to profound discoveries and methods.

Fake Degrees and Frontier Vets Were Your Only Hope

The period known as the Wild West occurred in the United States between the end of the Civil War and the “closing” of the American frontier around 1865 to 1895. This 30-year period saw rapid expansion as Americans traveled west to seek their fortunes. Such expansion limited the availability of medical care of any kind, much less access to medical doctors.  

The number of professionals was lacking, and only about 25% of people calling themselves “doctors” actually had a medical degree of some sort. What resulted was an amalgamation of different types of medical theories, most with untested practices that were more akin to folk medicine or charlatanism. Many doctors also served as veterinarians, and vice versa. Children were often born with the assistance of midwives, if available, and childbirth tended to be the domain of women rather than doctors.  

The Silent Outbreaks That Killed Settlers Faster Than Bullets

As vaccination and high sanitation standards were not yet common, diseases that are now rare often made their way through the West like wildfire, such as the cholera epidemic that spread throughout the California Gold Rush in 1849. This was the result of poor sanitation and crowded living conditions, which were also catalysts for other diseases such as diphtheria and dysentery.

Cholera was also responsible for a high number of deaths in Indian tribes, particularly among the Pawnee and Cheyenne. Tuberculosis, or “consumption,” was also a major factor in the Old West, and is known to have afflicted famous gunfighters such as Doc Holliday and a member of the Texas Rangers, Captain Leander McNelly.

How Opium Elixirs and the Rockefellers Created Snake Oil

“Snake oil” is the pejorative given to the “patent medicine” commonly sold throughout the Old West from traveling “medicine shows.”  They would draw a crowd with various entertainers, and a “professor” or “doctor” would try to sell the crowd bottles of some sort of elixir with outlandish claims of its curative effects. People would often be planted in the crowd claiming to have been cured by the medicine, which was often alcohol combined with a narcotic of some sort (often opium) and other spices or herbs.

The term “snake oil” originated from a real substance introduced by Chinese railway workers who came to America to work on the transcontinental railroad. They would extract the oil from the fat sack of a Chinese water snake, and it appears to have been a genuine remedy for inflammation. William D Rockefeller Sr, father of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, was one of the traveling salesmen who took the idea of snake oil and traveled around the West, selling it under the name “Dr. William Levingston.”  Some of the money he earned through his various businesses would help his son, John, start what would become the vast Standard Oil business empire.

Unwashed Hands Killed More Settlers Than Frontier Outlaws

The biggest problem that led to the most deaths in the Old West was the lack of cleanliness at every level. Germ theory was in its infancy, having only been formulated by 1878. Sanitation of water supplies was negligible, resulting particularly in the spread of cholera. Washing before surgery was rarely done, and sanitizing instruments was rare. However, the Old West saw the beginnings of some modern surgery practices.  

Dr. George Goodfellow was a genuine doctor who moved west around 1876 to practice medicine, and wound up involved (or nearly so) with many major characters of the Old West.  He almost joined General Custer’s 7th Cavalry, missing the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Goodfellow married Katherine Colt, a relative of Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt revolver. He also treated two of the Earp Brothers following the Gunfight at the OK Corral in 1881 after establishing a practice in Tombstone, Arizona.

Because of his proximity to some of the wildest situations in the Old West, Dr. Goodfellow became renowned for his effective treatment of gunshot wounds—particularly the sterilization methods he used in surgery. He became renowned for several firsts in surgery, all successful due to his skill and his sterilization techniques.

In 1820, a French orphan named Martin Fugate brought his American bride, Elizabeth Smith, to the isolated banks of Troublesome Creek in eastern Kentucky. Neither could have predicted that their union would launch a medical mystery spanning nearly two centuries. Both carried an extremely rare recessive genetic mutation that turned the blood of four of their seven children a dark chocolate brown, making their skin appear blue. Known to locals as the Blue Fugates, generations of this Appalachian clan lived with skin the color of deep indigo.

The Origin of the Fugates at Troublesome Creek

The peculiar story of the Fugate family begins with a French orphan named Martin Fugate. In 1820, Fugate claimed a land grant in Eastern Kentucky on the banks of Troublesome Creek. The creek, which runs through Knott County, was so named because of its nearly impassable game trail. Even experienced hunters could not weave their way through the valley, as large trees, creeping vines, and misshapen stones guarded the creek’s pathways.

A few families settled in the surrounding valleys, including Martin Fugate, who met and married Elizabeth Smith, a redheaded American woman. The Fugates settled in the remote valleys surrounding Troublesome and Ball creeks and had seven children. Three children came out white. Pale, they said, like their mother’s skin, which was “as pale as the mountain laurel that blooms every spring around the creek hollows.” The four other children were not white. They were beyond the conceptual understanding of skin color in America at the time. Four of the Fugate children were born blue.

If legend is to be believed, Martin Fugate himself was of an indigo tint. Eastern Kentucky, like much of Appalachia, relies heavily on the tradition of oral storytelling. Many in the region were born and raised illiterate, so passing down stories relied on the narrative of mothers, fathers, grandparents, and friends. This is how the story of Martin Fugate was passed through the hill country gossip mill.

Living in an isolated area, the Fugates married other Fugates while occasionally co-mingling with Smiths, Combses, Stacys, or Ritchies. This is how the blue people spread throughout Eastern Kentucky. But no one knew why they were blue. Some thought it was heart disease or lung disorder, while others described it as a disease where the blood got “too close to the skin.”

In addition to being the subject of gossip, the blue Fugates were also the target of superstition. Appalachia is a place of isolation, with unique customs and traditions. Many hill people believed that the blue skin of the Fugates was an act of the devil or that it was a racial issue. Some just thought they looked funny. For this reason, the Fugates and their blue descendants never really left their hollers and continued to intermarry.

Understanding Hereditary Methemoglobinemia and Blue Blood

In 1960, a young hematologist named Madison Cawein began hearing rumors at the University of Kentucky. People spoke about the blue hill folks of the Cumberland Plateau. There were blue Stacys, Combses, Smiths, and Fugates at that time as a result of inbreeding and the small gene pool from which many of Eastern Kentucky’s families came.

Cawein was an accomplished doctor. He helped isolate the antidote for cholera and helped create a drug for Parkinson’s Disease. He was, however, a hematologist at heart. Cawein said that “blood cells always looked beautiful to me,” so when he began hearing about the blue people, his interest was piqued.

Cawein, along with Ruth Pendergrass, a nurse from the American Heart Association clinic in Hazard, scoured the hollers for blue people. Pendergrass was fascinated with the blue people since she gave a blood test to a woman who identified herself as a blue Combs from Ball Creek. Cawein and Pendergrass went on daily missions to find blue people until they were frustrated and near giving up. After all, Cawein was forced to drive eight hours one way, from Lexington to Hazard, when he wanted to go on a search. Then a pair of siblings, Rachel and Patrick Ritchie, walked into the heart clinic in Hazard. They were blue, and Cawein had found his white (or blue) whale.

Cawein began charting the family’s history and found no evidence of heart disease. He suspected from the start a rare condition called methemoglobinemia, a rare but toxic form of anemia that can occur due to abnormal hemoglobin in the blood. However, when Cawein tested the pair for abnormal hemoglobin, the test returned negative.

Cawein turned to medical literature, where he found a case of Native Alaskans who seemed to resemble Kentucky’s blue people. The researcher who treated the blue Alaskans found that they had methemoglobinemia based on an enzyme deficiency and that this condition can be passed down through recessive traits.

The blue Kentuckians were found to lack the enzyme diaphorase, which helps process hemoglobin and keeps the blood from producing too much methemoglobin. While most people have less than one percent methemoglobin in their blood, the Fugates likely carried a level of about 10 to 20 percent; not enough to be harmful, but too much to have a standard skin color. This abundance of blue methemoglobin overpowered the ability of the red hemoglobin to transport oxygen to the blood, thus turning the Ritchies and their ancestors blue and their blood a chocolatey brown.

It seems that the enzyme deficiency began with Martin and Elizabeth Fugate, over 150 years before Cawein’s time, and had trickled down through many hill folks due to inbreeding.  Martin and Elizabeth both carried the gene by chance, and they passed it down until the 1960s when Cawein discovered the cause.

The Later Life of the Blue Fugates and Their Descendants

The blue people of Troublesome and Ball Creeks were not happy to be blue. Even when Dr. Cawein examined the Ritchie siblings, he could tell they were embarrassed by his questions. Patrick and Rachel were hunched, almost likely to hide their color with their body language. Dr. Cawein remembered, “You could tell how much it bothered them to be blue.” This embarrassment likely stemmed from the maltreatment from their mountain neighbors.

Cawein was eager to find a solution to their situation, and he did so quite quickly. To get the body to begin turning methemoglobin back to normal, an “electron donor” had to be introduced into the body. This substance would kickstart a color change in the patient, from blue to pink, by replicating the processes of a normal level of diaphorase. Methylene Blue was the obvious solution, as it had been used successfully and safely in the past. Many of the blue folks thought Dr. Cawein was crazy; after all, how could something blue fix the blue in their skin?

Cawein went ahead with the Methylene Blue injection, traveling to the Ritchie siblings’ cabin in the former mining town of Hardburly. He injected Patrick and Rachel with 100 milligrams each of the faux enzymes, and within minutes, the pair’s skin began to turn. By the end of the process, the Ritchies were fair-skinned for the first time in their lives. Cawein gave the siblings methylene blue in tablet form to take daily to maintain their skin tone.

Cawein also wanted to chart the families’ progression with the recessive gene, beginning with Martin Fugate. The recessive blueness did seem to fade throughout the family tree as modern advancements like the railway and modern roads were laid in Eastern Kentucky. However, this did not begin until the 1910s, gaining traction by the 1930s. With the roads came the eventual migration of the Fugate descendants, who moved into neighboring towns and began marrying people outside of their traditional circles.

Thus, the descendants of the original Fugate clan began losing their blue color until Benjamin Stacy was born in 1975 at the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Benjamin, or “Benjy,” was born purple. While doctors wanted to perform a blood transfusion, Benjy’s grandmother remarked that the baby’s great-grandmother, Luna Fugate, was known for having a similar coloring.

It turns out that Benjy’s father, Alva Stacy, was a direct descendant of Martin Fugate. Stacy’s family tree showed that he was, in his words, “kin to himself.” One of Martin and Elizabeth’s blue sons, Zachariah, married his maternal aunt. One of Zachariah’s sons, Levy, married a girl from the Ritchie family, and they had eight children. Luna, one of Levy and the Ritchie girl’s daughters, was blue. She married John E. Stacy, Benjy’s great-grandfather. Benjy’s skin eventually faded to a normal color, though rumor says that his lips and fingernails still turned blue when he was angry or cold.

The Blue Fugates in Popular Culture & Modern Society

According to an ABC News article from 2012, it is unknown if Benjy is still alive or whether there are other blue descendants of the Fugate clan around today. Their relatives are spread across the country, and some of the descendants are likely like Benjy, who owes his non-blue skin color to only carrying one gene for methemoglobinemia.

Not much is known about the Blue Fugates outside of the work accomplished by Dr. Cawein, but others do carry the blue gene or have been turned blue by outside factors like exposure and ingestion of anesthetics like benzocaine or xylocaine, meat additives like benzene, and certain nitrates, or antibiotics like dapsone or chloroquine. In one case, a man named Paul Karason turned his skin blue by consuming and rubbing his skin with colloidal silver compounds to self-treat various skin conditions.

In popular culture, the blue-skinned mountain people of Kentucky are featured most prominently in two books: The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson and Blue-Skinned Gods by S.J. Sindu. Both are fictionalized accounts of the Fugate lineage that don’t use the Fugate name. They’ve also been featured as stories on several TV shows focusing on strange history.

https://youtu.be/Rcn4M2vSvD4?si=0Frs4xiCaUUG5hub

No conflict in human history witnessed warfare on as many fronts or with as many advanced weapon systems as World War II. Officially beginning in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland, over 100 million uniformed personnel from 30 countries waged war via direct infantry combat, aerial bombing campaigns, naval actions, and covert espionage. While these methods helped the Allies counter Axis aggression in Europe, the Pacific, and North Africa, few assets brought as much destruction as American artillery.

Growing Axis Momentum

Prior to the United States entering World War II in late 1941, the Axis powers were off to a blistering start that worried Allied leaders. After quickly conquering Poland via blitzkrieg tactics, Germany marched west. By mid-1940, Adolf Hitler controlled Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, Norway, France, and the Netherlands. Fueled by two decades of resentment following defeat in World War I and grievances from the perceived injustices of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany continued its campaign across Western Europe. By 1941, Nazi Germany occupied much of mainland Europe.

Hitler’s counterpart in Italy, Benito Mussolini, extended the Axis front into North Africa and the Balkans with German support, gaining a foothold in Egypt and Libya. Similarly, Japan tightened its grip on key territories in the Pacific and Southeast Asia including large parts of China, Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand.

Determined to dissuade the United States from joining Allied partners, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact in 1940, outwardly portraying a unified front to the sleeping giant. By late 1941, however, Japanese-American negotiations reached a stalemate, leading Japanese Prime Minister Tojo to surprise the world by attacking the United States Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war.

America Enters the War

On December 7, 1941, Japan executed a surprise bombardment against key military installations across the island of Oahu, Hawaii, from aircraft carriers staged nearly 250 miles north of the island. Although not destined for American statehood for another 18 years, the island housed thousands of United States armed forces personnel. In addition to its devastating aerial raid on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese neutralized targets at Hickam Airfield, Wheeler Airfield, Bellows Airfield, Kāne’ohe Naval Air Station, Schofield Barracks, and Ewa Marine Corps Air Station.

The attack on Pearl Harbor was not only a surprise to American commanders who overlooked possible attack indicators, but even Hitler was unaware of the Japanese plans. After continuous torpedo strafes and precise bombardments, over 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,100 were wounded on the day which, in the words of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, would “live in infamy.”

Little did the United States know that its first shots of World War II would be fired against the Japanese on the otherwise calm December morning. For America’s artillerymen, Pearl Harbor represented the first chance for them to prove their worth against the foe. During the attack, the United States destroyed 29 Japanese planes, led by American anti-aircraft crews and the few fighter pilots who managed to take off amid the chaos. Allied artillery assets continued their strong showing shortly after Pearl Harbor.

North Africa

For many American service personnel, North Africa represented the first taste of fighting the enemy after Pearl Harbor. In November 1942, the Allies launched Operation Torch with landings on the beaches of Morocco and Algeria, marking the first major campaign in Africa. Artillery proved vital during the assault. From pre-landing bombardments to continued indirect fire support, field and naval artillery missions allowed the Allies to capture the beachheads, supply depots, and transportation centers.

North African terrain presented numerous challenges for effective artillery deployment. Gun crews faced extreme heat during the daytime and freezing temperatures at night which affected both the men and the howitzers they operated. Weather conditions were complicated by sandstorms and dust which demanded constant maintenance and obscured fields of vision, making effective observation, coordination, and delivery of projectiles an arduous task. Lastly, water scarcity jeopardized not only dehydrated soldiers, but also affected cooling and mixing techniques for artillery equipment, systems, and ammunition.

Despite these logistical setbacks, American artillery evolved to adapt to the harsh terrain. By adding specialized filters to howitzers, creating scheduled maintenance processes, and acclimating to the desert, the Allies countered German advances during the 1942 Tunisian Campaign and Battle of Kasserine Pass in 1943. These successes through hardship in North Africa permitted the Allies to penetrate north into Europe through the invasion of Sicily via Operation Husky in July 1943.

Europe

One of the most important contributions made by Allied artillery was during the D-Day landings in Normandy. The accumulation of months of planning, Operation Overlord delivered Allied troops into mainland Europe to liberate France and begin the final push of countering Axis fighters back into Germany. Prior to the assault, naval bombardments weakened the German artillery positions and machine gun nests as Allied infantrymen disembarked from their landing crafts. Projectile craters caused by friendly artillery also provided cover and concealment for the troops on the beaches of Normandy.

Once on land, field artillery crews immediately supported the assault. With 105mm howitzers and their larger 155mm counterparts, gun crews disrupted German defenses for hours with high-explosive munitions. Allied victories continued into the winter of 1944. During the Battle of the Bulge, Germany launched their surprise assault with tremendous artillery barrages. Prepared for counterfire operations, American gun crews quickly returned fire on German batteries. Successful defense of Axis offensives through harsh conditions in early 1945 allowed the Allies to retain key terrain in Bastogne and St. Vith.

By March 1945, the Allies were well positioned to cross the Rhine River into Germany. There, American howitzers initiated Operation Plunder with over 5,000 artillery pieces to weaken German defenses near the crossing. Indirect fire also supported the largest airborne operation of World War II, Operation Varsity, to allow safe landing for American and British troops. The Allies were now securely on German soil.

The Pacific

Although the Allies faced difficulties in emplacing artillery in North Africa and Europe, few fronts presented challenges to similar levels as the Pacific Theater. In many cases, field artillery could not be deployed in time to support Allied island-hopping campaigns. Despite its limited use, American artillery did help the Allies defend the vital airstrip at Henderson Field during the Battle of Guadalcanal, maintaining control of the key island.

As a result of dense jungle terrain and limited transportation infrastructure which impeded the operation of artillery on land, naval bombardments were far more commonly employed to support infantry operations. US naval artillery decimated Japanese defenses prior to the amphibious assault at the 1943 Battle of Tarawa and the 1944 Battle of Saipan.

American artillery was heavily exploited during the 1945 Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two of the most significant encounters of the Pacific Theater. At Iwo Jima, the Japanese defenses took the form of underground networks of bunkers and trenches. Artillery fire from land and sea, specifically from the USS Iowa and USS New Jersey, heavily weakened these otherwise unreachable fortifications to soften the defenses prior to assault on land.

Once on shore, Marines used mobile artillery pieces including 75mm pack howitzers and 105mm guns to rain fire from above. At Okinawa, over 1,500 artillery pieces, including naval guns and field-based 105mm and 155mm howitzers, combined to overwhelm the Japanese defenders prior to the land assault. The United States military’s Tenth Army alone fired over 1.1 million rounds against Japanese defenders during the battle.

Legacy

American involvement in World War II allowed the US military to utilize fire direction centers, a method of centralizing precise calculations for indirect fire from removed operations hubs introduced in the 1930s. By receiving targeting information such as enemy locations, dispositions, sizes, and movements from forward observers on the battlefield via radio communication, fire direction centers could account for hazardous terrain, assign fire to the best-positioned batteries, and ensure gun crews were given the most accurate information possible. The successes of fire direction centers during World War II ensured their continued employment in wartime, and the method is still used by the United States today.

Although artillery was instrumental in defeating the Axis powers and restoring freedom to much of the world, its effects negatively affected soldiers mentally and physically. Known as shell shock during World War I and post-traumatic stress disorder in modern times, combat fatigue plagued troops on both sides of conflict by inflicting immense mental anguish and exhaustion.

The contribution of Allied artillery during World War II is undeniable. In fact, General Patton attributed Allied victory solely to artillery. As the deadliest weapon systems in the most destructive conflict in human history, the importance of artillery in achieving Allied victory cannot be understated. In September 1945, President Harry Truman, who served in World War I as an artillery officer, controversially authorized the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in an effort to end the war. He justified his decision based on the expected loss of life on both sides during the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands.

Johannes Kepler didn’t want to destroy astrology; in fact, he loved it. He was a practicing court astrologer and imperial mathematician, so he relied on casting horoscopes for his career. He hated the way street fortune tellers told horoscopes without any mathematics to back up their “predictions.” He wanted to ground astrology in cold, hard science, but as he researched his hypothesis, he discovered the laws of planetary motion. He proved that the stars didn’t influence people’s fates, but rather that they moved in imperfect ellipses by gravity. He killed his beloved astrology.

Johannes Kepler and the Renaissance Obsession With the Stars

Johannes Kepler was an important astrologer for royalty and prominent figures, including Emperor Rudolph II and General Albrecht von Wallenstein. Astrology was his career, but along with casting horoscopes, he also followed the movement of the stars with math called astronomy. 

In his day, these two scientific practices were two halves of the same coin; one could not exist without the other. However, Kepler was tired of the charlatans who predicted futures on the street. He held a deep belief that God created a geometric universe, so he set out to prove that the future could be found in the stars and that the universe was geometric perfection. 

Why Kepler Rejected the Traditional Zodiac Houses

The common street fortune-mongers relied on the 12 houses of the Zodiac to divine fortunes. Kepler hated the 12 houses and thought they were man-made garbage. They didn’t have any physical reality to prove that they truly influenced life. As an educated man, Kepler turned to mathematics, in this case geometry, to prove that the stars did indeed influence humanity, but not based on the Zodiac. Instead, these divine aspects came from the planets that created physical, musical harmonies in the human soul.  This was where the true horoscopes lay, but he had to find the geometry to prove it.

How Elliptical Orbits Ruined Astrological Mathematics

Kepler loved his circular orbits, but when he studied the orbit of Mars, he discovered that it moved in an elliptical fashion. What was moving the Red Planet was the sun! It astounded Kepler, and he had to break with the popular Aristotelian theory about spheres. Astrology relied on Aristotle’s theory that the universe remained an unchanging constant, but Kepler’s telescopic observations proved otherwise. Because astrology remained constant, the calculations remained fluid and easy to make. Kepler, however, introduced calculations about elliptical orbits and variable speeds that threw these completely off. 

The Rudolphine Tables and the Death of a Symbolic Cosmos

What Kepler did was use his own observations with Tycho Brahe along with his new mathematical concepts to create the Rudolphine Tables. This publication predicted the planetary positions extremely accurately. Astrologers were keen to implement the new mathematical formulas into their charts, but it proved that their “science” was wrong. Because the universe could be explained with hard facts, there wasn’t any room for spiritual interpretations. This forced scholars and some charlatans (although they still existed) to accept that the universe was predictable and could be explained with the new information Kepler printed.

The Unintended Legacy of a Mystical Mathematician

What happened afterward was a huge division that led to a divorce between astrology and astronomy. The scientific community backed off from astrology and left it to the street charlatans who could still persuade uneducated rubes that the stars and planets controlled their fates. Meanwhile, Kepler has become acknowledged as the father of modern astronomy as well as one of the founders of modern physics. He bridged the gap between the two disciplines, proving that his hypothesis about a grand, orderly universe was in fact wrong. Instead of trying to make the science fit his facts, he adapted, and the field of astronomy has expanded like the Doppler effect. Astrology, however, has become akin to tarot cards and using crystals. It’s an amusement but nothing near true science.