On April 1, 2001, an American EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance plane on an eavesdropping mission collided with a Chinese interceptor jet over the South China Sea, triggering the first international crisis of George W. Bush’s Administration. The Chinese jet crashed, and its pilot was killed, but the pilot of the American aircraft, Navy Lieutenant Shane Osborn, managed to make an emergency landing at a Chinese F-8 fighter base on Hainan Island, fifteen miles from the mainland. Osborn later published a memoir, in which he described the “incessant jackhammer vibration” as the plane fell eight thousand feet in thirty seconds, before he regained control

Thomas More was born in Milk Street, London on February 7, 1478, son of Sir John More, a prominent judge.

(Swans - August 9, 2010) Smyrna and Salonica still sparkled in the tarnished crown of the Ottoman Empire as the 20th century began. In decline the Ottomans welcomed Western imperial efforts within their leaky empire. Smyrna, the splendid port city on the east coast of the Aegean, was the prime example. Americans were the most recent arrivals and didn't hide their intentions.

The french have a fine old tradition of political side-switching. Consider François Mitterrand, the late socialist president. Having played both horses in wartime France, first as a Vichyite, then as a member of the Resistance, he went on to attack Charles de Gaulle for his imperiousness and authoritarian tendencies. After decades of striving, he finally made president himself in 1981. Gone was the humble man-of-the-people act. Sphinx-like and superior, he ruled the Republic as a modern-day Sun King, erected huge architectural monuments to himself, read complicated books, and ate tiny songbirds the size of a toe, as detailed in confidant Georges-Marc Benamou's classic account of Mitterrand's last supper — food and death porn rolled into one.

The Turin Shroud, said to be the burial cloth of Christ, was secretly hidden in a Benedictine abbey during the Second World War because the Vatican feared that Adolf Hitler wanted to steal it.

On the 70th anniversary of Stalin’s decision to execute more than 21,000 Polish officers at Katyn and other places, the Memorial human rights group has urged Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to denounce that action as a crime against humanity and to ensure that those involved in that crime can be publically held responsible.

War crime, payback or a legitimate attack aimed at shortening World War II? The destruction of Dresden on February 13, 1945 is one of the most controversial bombing raids of the conflict. It's now the subject of a new German film that aims to tell the story from several points of view.

For as long as many can remember, the United States has been the country with money, influence, and power. But all that is changing, write Brad DeLong and Stephen Cohen in their new book, The End of Influence.