Ormstown, Quebec – Propped up by a shovel that acts as his cane, Vladimir Katriuk putters about his wooded lot in rural Quebec, lovingly caring for his bees and appearing to have few worries other than this season’s honey yield.

But a prominent Jewish human-rights organization insists there’s much more to the cordial 91-year-old beekeeper — whom they allege is of the world’s most-wanted Nazi war criminals.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center recently ranked Katriuk No. 4 on its top-10 list of suspected former Nazis, after a new study alleged he was a key participant in a village massacre during the Second World War....

Los Angeles, California (April 26, 2012) BACM Research – PaperlessArchives.com has announced the publishing of the British SOE (Special Operations Executive) report on Operation Foxley, The British plan for the assassination of Adolf Hitler.
 
To see read the complete description, see sample pages, or to obtain the documents go to:
 
http://www.paperlessarchives.com/wwii_operation_foxley.html
 
In 1944, the office of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), reduced plans to assassinate Adolf Hitler, that formed Operation Foxley, to a report. The plan to assassinate Hitler was drawn up by a SOE agent code named LB/X, whose true identity is still kept a secret.
 
The report gives details of Hitler’s daily routine and eating habits; aerial photographs, drawings of Hitler’s Alpine retreat, details of assassination methods, sketches of SS Guard uniforms, agents’ disguises and "guest" workers. The report provides intelligence on Hitler’s alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, documentary and photographic evidence is provided concerning his limousines and trains.
 
The report details one plot to kill Hitler by bombing his train and another to poison the water on the train. The plan given the greatest likelihood of success involved the use of a sniper to kill Hitler. A captured Hitler guard revealed that while Hitler was at Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s home in the Obersalzberg of the Bavarian Alps near  Berchtesgaden, Germany, Hitler always took a morning walk, around the same time (after 10:00 a.m.) and for the same duration, about 20 minutes. In addition, Hitler liked to be left alone during this walk....

Swiss banks systematically hid and destroyed records of bank accounts from the Holocaust period, thus preventing their owners from claiming their money and assets, according to a lawsuit set to be filed next week.

During the Nazi regime in 1933-1945 some 7 million bank accounts were created in Switzerland. An estimated 60,000 of them were opened by Jews in a bid to salvage their property from the Nazis, with the intention of reclaiming it after World War II.

Years later it emerged that the records of some 3 million of these accounts had disappeared and been destroyed....

There's never a good time to get clobbered by an asteroid — something the dinosaurs discovered in the worst way possible. It was 65.5 million years ago that an asteroid measuring 6 mi. (10 km) across, slammed into the Earth just off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, blasting out a 110 mi. (180 km) crater and sending out a cloud of globe-girdling debris that cooled and darkened the world. That spelled doom for species that had come to like things bright and warm. Before long (in geological terms, at least) the dinos were gone and the mammals arose.

That's how the story has long been told and it's still the most-widely accepted theory. Now, however, a study led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and published in Nature Communications suggests that the asteroid may not have affected all dinosaur species equally. Some, including the well-loved triceratops and duck-billed dinosaurs, might have been on their way out already and were simply hastened to the exit by the asteroid blast. The reason for their weakened state — and the way the investigators discovered it — provide both new insights into the fate of the dinosaurs and new methods with which to study their world....

Vanity Fair magazine has published an excerpt from Washington Post reporter David Maraniss’ upcoming biography of the president entitled “Barack Obama: The Story.” (Regular Fix readers know how excited we have been/are about this book, which goes on sale next month.)

The six page excerpt focuses on two of Obama’s early girlfriends.One, named Alex McNear, Obama met at Occidental College before he transferred to Columbia. She came to New York for a summer, the start of a long-distance, letter-based relationship in 1982.

Maraniss got a hold of many of the letters they exchanged....

On its towering hilltop perch, the Krak des Chevaliers, one of the world's best preserved Crusader castles, held off a siege by the Muslim warrior Saladin nearly 900 years ago. It was lauded by Lawrence of Arabia for its beauty and has been one of the crown jewels of Syria's tourism.

But it has fallen victim to the chaos of Syria's uprising and the crackdown against it by President Bashar Assad's government. Recently, gunmen broke into the castle, threw out the staff and began excavations to loot the site, says Bassam Jammous, general director of the Antiquities and Museum Department in Damascus....

The stone slabs of England's Stonehenge may have been more than just a spectacular sight to the ancient people who built the structure; they likely created an acoustic environment unlike anything they normally experienced, new research hints.

"As they walk inside they would have perceived the sound environment around them had changed in some way,"said researcher Bruno Fazenda, a professor at the University of Salford in the United Kingdom. "They would have been stricken by it, they would say, 'This is different.'"

These Neolithic people might have felt as modern people do upon entering a cathedral, Fazenda told LiveScience....

ScienceDaily (May 1, 2012) — Thirty-seven skeletons found in a mass burial site in the grounds of St John's College may not be who they initially seemed, according to Oxford researchers studying the remains.

When the bodies were discovered in the grounds of the college in 2008 by Thames Valley Archaeological Services, archaeologists speculated that they could have been part of the St Brice's Day Massacre in Oxford -- a well documented event in 1002, in which King Aethelred the Unredy ordered the killing of 'all Danes living in England'.

However, a new research paper, led by Oxford University, has thrown up a new theory -- that the skeletons may have been Viking raiders who were captured and then executed....

Nearly eight years after his fabled career at CBS News imploded like a death star over the notorious George W. Bush/Texas Air National Guard segment on 60 Minutes Wednesday, he can’t stop combing the debris for shards of vindication.

Mighty oaks from little acorns grow.

An old saying, it came to mind as University of Minnesota lecturer Carter Meland talked to me about a thought-provoking video project of the 60 students in his introductory “American Indians in Minnesota” class.

Maybe the documentary they premier May 1 will in the end be little more than a classroom exercise. Or, maybe it will spark some kind of official, mighty-oak apology from the state of Minnesota.

At any rate, the exercise has already jump-started discussion among students about the tumultuous history of Indians in Minnesota, from their treatment after the bloody Dakota Conflict, to boarding schools for Indian children where they were often forbidden to speak their native language and many say stripped of their culture, to tribal land ownership issues.

Students earning required social justice and diversity credits are producing the 60-minute video that also explores a possible apology for what Meland calls “colonist policy and practices,’’ as well as reparations to the state’s Dakota and Ojibwe people, Meland explains. The public is invited to the premier, as well as Gov. Mark Dayton and University president Eric Kaler, though both are unable to attend. Find details at story’s end....

The Marin History Museum (MHM), based in San Rafael, joined a select group of prominent institutions on Thursday, with the launch of the Marin History Museum smartphone Application. The Museum is one of less than a dozen museums nationally that have developed applications as part of their public offerings. Other institutions that have developed museum apps include the New York MOMA, the Smithsonian Institutions, the Guggenheim, and the Museum of Natural History. The Museum is currently evolving its organizational focus to emphasize a more user-friendly community experience.

The Marin History Museum App allows users to travel through the history of Marin County by viewing an interactive map of the county with over 250 points of historical interest marked by geo-coded icons. Users can click each icon to gain access to virtual exhibitions of audio, video, and licensable photographs from the vast Marin History Museum Archives.  Additional features allow you to create your own “virtual tour” of Marin County’s Historic hotspots and give users GPS-like proximity to historic sites. “It’s a great educational tool and tremendous resource for Marin residents and visitors alike to learn more about the history all around them and it’s impact on the history of California,” said George Thelen, Museum Volunteer and Project Manager on the App. “This App will ultimately give users access to a vast  ‘Virtual Museum’ of Marin History Museum digitized content & archives.” While the majority of museum apps are directly related to an onsite exhibit, the MHM app goes beyond the brick and mortar walls or the Museum and allows users to explore the rich history of beautiful Marin County.

The Marin History Museum App gives users access to the largest and most extensive collection of Marin County related historic content. The non-profit Marin History Museum is the steward of the largest collection of artifacts, photographs and ephemera related to Marin County and the Museum is solely supported by community donations and contributions of individual donors. The museum is fortunate to have received a generous donation to fund this application, as the majority of museum apps that are developed by large institutions are done so with significantly higher budgets and resources.

Historic locations marked on the map include ancient Miwok Indian sites, historic residences, regional & local historical societies, movie locations, state & national landmarks and more than 75 historic shipwrecks off the Marin Coast dating back to 1595. The App will be updated monthly and is available for FREE for a limited time on iPhone, iPad and Android platforms online on the APP Store.