On This Day, Jan. 27: Soviets liberate Auschwitz
Jan. 27 (UPI) -- On this date in history:
In 1606, the surviving conspirators in the "Gunpowder Treason" plot to blow up the English Parliament and the king of England on Nov. 5, 1605, were convicted. They were executed four days later.
In 1785, the first public university in the United States was founded as the University of Georgia.
In 1888, The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington.
In 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird launched a revolution in communication and entertainment with the first public demonstration of a true television system in London.
In 1944, the Soviet army lifted the Siege of Leningrad, a more than 2-year occupation of the Russian city by Nazi forces in which more than 1 million civilians died or went missing.
In 1945, the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz network of concentration camps in Poland, freeing some 7,000 survivors. Months later, four Jewish young women told United Press correspondent Edward W. Beattie Jr. how they used rouge to during their captivity to avoid being killed along with other prisoners who looked too ill to work.
In 1967, U.S. astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch simulation at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
In 1973, the United States and North Vietnam signed a cease-fire agreement following lengthy Paris talks between U.S. national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft. Although the U.S.combat mission officially ended in 1973, the Vietnam War would not be over until April of 1975.
In 1984, singer Michael Jackson sustained a burn on his scalp during the filming of a soft-drink commercial.
In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan acknowledged mistakes and accepted responsibility in the Iran-Contra arms scandal.
In 1991, U.S. planes bombed pipelines to Kuwaiti oil fields to cut off the flow of oil into the Persian Gulf.
In 1996, France conducted an open-air nuclear test in the South Pacific.
In 1998, in his State of the Union address, U.S. President Bill Clinton hailed the fact that the federal government would have a balanced budget in 1999 -- the first in 30 years.
In 2002, a series of explosions at a military depot in Lagos, Nigeria, killed more than 1,000 people.
In 2011, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was replacing the nationwide color-coded, terror-alert scale with a system that would focus on specific terror threats to potential targets.
In 2013, fire at the overcrowded Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil, killed more than 230 people, most of them victims of smoke inhalation. About 170 others were injured.
In 2017, President Donald Trump signed his first executive order banning travel to the United States for people from seven mostly Muslim countries, prompting protests and multiple lawsuits.
In 2024, Royal Caribbean's 1,198-foot-long Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship with a gross tonnage of 250,800, set sail on its maiden passenger voyage from Miami. The ship features 20 decks and can hold about 10,000 people.
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CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Lesley Lokko is on a mission to transform architecture, fostering a new generation of ‘more dynamic thinkers'
When Lesley Lokko was a young student in 1990s London, architecture was a place of openness and experimentation. And yet, she felt the discipline was incapable of thinking beyond European concepts of space. 'We were being taught… in a very predominantly Eurocentric way, about the difference between inside and outside, between privacy and publicity, or even simple things like a family structure,' said the renowned Scottish-Ghanian architect, now in her 60s. She noted the difference between her experience growing up around extended family and the small 'two-up, two-down' homes common among nuclear families in the UK. Even her way of thinking about building materials was at odds with the curriculum: in the tropics, concrete rots and metal rusts. 'The way you think about weather and materials and circulation and ventilation is very different,' Lokko told CNN over a video call from Ghana's capital Accra. Fast forward three decades and Lokko is now the educator leading the classroom. Her initiative, the African Futures Institute (AFI), is an effort to radically re-imagine what a design education should look like for younger generations. The institute, based in Accra, was initially going to be an independent post-graduate school of architecture. But Lokko soon realized the logistics and resources needed to start an entirely new school might be out of reach. 'Also, I'm not sure that the world needs another architecture school… what it needs are more ambitious, more creative, more dynamic thinkers and makers,' she said. Instead, the AFI will host the Nomadic African Studio, a series of annual studio sessions offering new ways to think about architecture and design as they relate to pressing global issues, like climate change and migration. Over half of the first group of participants are from Africa, with another 25% from the diaspora. Part of the project aims to turn narratives about Africa on their heads. Echoing post-colonial thinkers like Frantz Fanon, the West Indian psychiatrist and philosopher, Lokko laments how the continent has long been 'positioned as the recipient of knowledge.' 'We're the producer of raw materials, but we are the recipients of finished products — whether that's intellectual products or cars,' she said, expressing her desire for the project to demonstrate that Africa is also 'the generator of ideas… and knowledge.' Last year, Lokko became the first African woman to be awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects' Royal Gold Medal in its 176-year-history. The year before, she became the first Black architect to curate the Venice Biennale, with her program widely celebrated as one of the most politically-engaged, environmentally aware and inclusive in the event's history. (Her attempts to stretch the boundaries and reach of the discipline were not without criticism, however: architect Patrik Schumacher, principal of the late Zaha Hadid's firm, lamented that the event from his perspective did 'not show any architecture.') Lokko's achievements signal a breakthrough for diversity in the discipline (in the UK, nearly 80% of registered architects are White). But how does Lokko feel about being the 'first' to receive these prestigious accolades and appointments? 'The constant refrain, the first Black, the first woman, the first African, they've always seemed to me to be other people's descriptions. It's not how I would describe myself,' she said. 'The 'first' only really makes sense when you're not living here,' she added, referring to her home in Ghana. 'When I left Accra, I was half-Scottish, half-Ghanaian,' she said of leaving the country at 17 for boarding school in England. 'When I arrived in London the next morning, I was Black.' But she acknowledges the monumental achievements are a 'massive leverage' enabling her to pursue projects like AFI. 'Whatever the descriptions are, they give you access to supporters, donors, funders, philanthropists, in a way that you probably wouldn't have without it. It's a bit of a double-edged sword,' Lokko added. The future — and preparing younger generations for it — are at the forefront of Lokko's practice today. When she curated the Biennale, the average age of participants was 43 (significantly younger than previous editions). Half the practitioners on the program hailed from Africa or the African diaspora. The Biennale also centered the continent through its central exhibition theme: Africa as the Laboratory of the Future. 'It was an attempt to say that so many of the conditions that the rest of the world are now beginning to face, Africa has been facing those for 1,000 years and, in some ways, we're ahead of the present,' said Lokko, who used the word 'laboratory' to convey the continent as a workshop 'where people can come together to imagine what the future can look like.' The Nomadic African Studio appears to take a leaf from the same book. The first of its annual month-long programs will launch in Fez, Morocco this July. Around 30 participants under the age of 35 were either chosen from an open call or invited by a nomination committee to join the free program. (Lokko admitted there was pushback about the age limit but she wanted to use the inaugural studio to address Africa as 'a continent of young people.') Working in small groups, participants will be given a topic — like city-making or cultural identity — to interpret and produce a model, design, film, or performance around. The focus, for Lokko, is not on the outcome. She is critical of architectural education for its tendency to fixate on finished products. The point here is not about producing speedy outputs, it's about 'teaching people how to think.' 'You can have a huge impact on the way someone thinks about really important, difficult topics,' said Lokko, who hopes that after five iterations, hundreds of people will have benefitted from its rigorous, exploratory environment. 'Maybe, eventually, a new form of school will emerge,' she said. Lokko herself had no plans of becoming an architect. She studied Hebrew and Arabic for a term at the University of Oxford before studying sociology in the US. She considered becoming a lawyer, and was working as an office manager when an offhand comment set her on the path to becoming an architect. While helping a colleague sketch countertops for his side businesses (a restaurant and dry cleaners), he became struck by her drawings. He told her: ''You're mad. Why do you want to be a sociologist or a lawyer? You should be an architect,'' Lokko recalled. 'It was literally the first time it had ever occurred to me.' At 29, she found herself back in the UK and enrolled in an undergraduate degree program at University College London's famed Bartlett School of Architecture. Lokko felt 'fortunate' to study there at a time of what she called great experimentation and academic open-mindedness — though the field remained male-dominated and lacking in diversity. 'I think there were maybe six or seven women in the class… there was only one other person of color,' she recalled. Beyond the demographics, aspects of the discipline felt restrictive and didn't reflect the experiences Lokko had with built spaces growing up in Ghana. 'The rules seemed to be that you conformed to architecture, rather than architecture conforming to what you might have known,' she explained, referencing ways of learning about space that didn't account for the world outside of Europe. 'I was very conscious all the time of having to forget all that in order to excel at what I was being taught,' said Lokko, adding that those first few years pursuing her degree were a matter of 'suppressing my instincts and experiences.' In the early 2000s, Lokko decided the architecture field wasn't for her and left a teaching job in the US to become a writer. For 15 years, she worked full time writing novels that explored themes of racial and cultural identity through romance and historical fiction. It was an unorthodox move that ended up broadening her perspective as an architect. '(Fiction) allowed me to develop certain ideas around identity, around race, around belonging, around history that I think I would have really struggled to articulate in architecture,' she explained. After so much time away from the discipline, she was called back when she was asked to be an external examiner for the University of Johannesburg's graduate program. It was at a time when South Africa was undergoing profound change with the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall movements, when university students demanded the removal of 19th century colonist Cecil Rhodes' statue at the University of Cape Town and refused tuition hikes — eventually securing a freeze on their fees. The student activist movement also called for the 'decolonization' and 'transformation' of higher education institutions across the country, where academia was a predominantly White space. (In 2012, White academics made up 53% of full-time permanent academic staff despite White people making up 8% of South Africa's population.) Lokko stayed on, becoming an associate professor in the university's department of architecture, which she remembers as having low enrollment and little diversity. The opportune timing meant the atmosphere was ripe for change, leading her to found a new graduate school of architecture at the university in 2014. 'Suddenly, the flood gates opened, and Black students started pouring into the school,' she said, the experience allowing her to develop a way of teaching that was relevant to Africans and post-colonial identities. But what made all these Black students enroll in a discipline that had been dominated by White students for so long? 'At a really basic level — having role models, having professors of color,' said Lokko. 'Female students would say to me: 'We'd never encountered somebody like you before.'' The enrollment numbers were also bolstered by her efforts to center the curriculum around student interests and the cultural context they were approaching architecture from. It was all part of a broader ethos Lokko uses to approach education, the job of which is, she said, to 'dream about possibilities for a future that's not yet here.'
Hamilton Spectator
2 hours ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Want to grow your own rice? A step-by-step guide for adventurous gardeners
Many of us think of rice as a plant that grows in flooded fields, and that's because the kind of rice we're most familiar with — the long-grain, wetland variety called lowland rice — can be considered semi-aquatic, although it's technically a grass. Lowland rice would be challenging to grow in a home garden, but another, less common variety can be cultivated more easily in typical backyard conditions. Duborskian rice, a Russian short-grained dryland, or 'upland' rice, is a highly ornamental plant that can even be grown in containers, where its 2-foot-tall green and gold panicles will lend height and beauty to the center or rear of mixed planters . But if grown as a crop, cultivating rice from your plants can be a fun activity for adventurous gardeners. Start by making space When determining how many plants to grow, consider that it takes approximately 10 plants to produce 1 pound of rice. Since each plant occupies only 1 foot of garden space, a 10-by-10-foot plot will hold 100 plants, which will yield roughly 6 to 10 pounds of rice in a season. In the absence of purchased starter plants, seeds are best sown directly into the garden in May or June in frost-free zones. Elsewhere, they should be started indoors four weeks before the danger of frost has passed. Expect seeds to germinate in five to seven days. A 24-hour water soak before sowing will hasten germination. Indoor starts are best aided by a heat mat. Four-week-old seedlings should be transplanted outdoors at the same time it's considered safe to plant tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in your region . Taking care of your rice plants Select a sunny spot and enrich the soil with a generous amount of compost before planting. Since the rice requires a high level of nutrients, fertilize every two weeks with a balanced, all-purpose fertilizer. Space plants 1 foot apart to ensure adequate circulation between them, as they will need to be pollinated by wind. You might also surround plants with netting to protect them from birds. Keep the surrounding soil free of weeds throughout the growing season. Separating the rice from the chaff, and other steps Your rice will be ready to harvest in about 105 days. You'll know it's ready when the seed heads appear dry but haven't yet dropped their seeds. At that point, cut plants down to ground level and hang the stalks up for a few days to dry further. But that's not the end of it. Rice will have to be removed from its stalks, and each grain's tough outer shell, called a hull, will need to be removed. On commercial farms, they have equipment to do this, but since you're growing rice at home, you will have to do it manually. Tie the cut ends of the dried stalks together, then place a screen (an old window screen will do) over a wheelbarrow. Rub the seed heads against the screen until the grains fall off into the wheelbarrow. If this sounds too complicated, you can achieve the same results by beating the tied bunch of stalks onto a clean sheet that you've laid on the ground. Once the grains have been separated from their stalks, scoop them up and remove the hulls in batches using a mortar and pestle (put the kids to work!) If you don't have a mortar and pestle, you can hit them with a rubber mallet, but it's a delicate balance to remove the hulls without crushing the rice. The next step is to separate the proverbial rice from the chaff (the hulls). The easiest way to accomplish this is to use a fan to blow the light-as-air hulls away. You can't eat the hulls, but they can be added to compost piles or used as mulch. If you'd like to save rice for replanting next year, put some aside before removing the hulls; they'll need to be intact for the seeds to germinate. To enjoy the fruits of your labor, cook the grains as you would any rice and enjoy it in sweet or savory recipes. It'll be good, but not likely as good as the story you'll be able to tell about that time you grew your own rice. ___ Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice. ___ For more AP gardening stories, go to .
Yahoo
18 hours ago
- Yahoo
Watch: Library returns 1953 wedding photo found in book to couple's family
June 10 (UPI) -- A volunteer at a Michigan library found a wedding photo from the 1950s inside a book and the facility was able to return the precious picture to the couple's granddaughter. The Sterling Heights Public Library said on social media that the photo, labeled "Frank and Josephine Ruggirello, Nana-Nono," was found inside a tome donated to the library's Used, But Sterling Bookstore. "One of my childhood friends who I haven't spoken to in years tagged me in this post, and so I read the post from the Sterling Heights Public Library," Sarah Ruggirello told WXYZ-TV. "And she recognized my last name in it and said 'Hey, are these some family members of yours?'" Ruggirello confirmed the photo was from her grandparents' Detroit wedding on Sept. 26, 1953. Frank Ruggirello died in 2020, and Josephine died in 2023. The couple had been married for 67 years. Sarah Ruggirello said the photo is now a family treasure. "My dad and I have never seen this exact photo before. We didn't know this exact photo existed," Ruggirello said. "I think now I'm going to frame it and display it somewhere in my house just because this was such a cool story and such a cool thing that happened."
