9 November 2015

traceur

/træˈsɜː/

noun

1. a participant in the sport or activity of parkour

Word Origin

C20: French,literally: one who traces

Collins English Dictionary – Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition
© William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
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Anagram

art cure
true car

Today’s quote

Possession isn’t nine-tenths of the law. It’s nine-tenths of the problem.

– John Lennon

On this day

9-10 November 1938 – Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) – Nazi paramilitary forces (the Brownshirts) and non-Jewish German citizens attack Jews, smash windows of synagogues, shops and houses. At least 91 Jews were killed in the attack and more than 30,000 incarcerated in concentration camps. Over 1,000 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed or damaged. The Nazis undertook the attack following the assassination of German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in Paris, a German-born Polish Jew. However, it is likely that the attack would have happened anyway, as Kristallnacht is seen as the beginning of Hitler’s Final Solution which was to eliminate Jews from Europe. The Final Solution culminated in the Holocaust, in which more than 6 million Jews were executed, along with many other ‘undesirables’, such as Gypsys, homosexuals and dissidents. At its height, the Nazis had over 40,000 concentration camps in which millions of Jews and others were executed, sometimes by firing squad, but often by gas chamber. The Nazis also conducted medical experiments on the prisoners, in an effort to build a genetically modified ‘master race’. The subjects who survived the experiments were usually executed and dissected.

9 November 1967 – First edition of Rolling Stone magazine is published, and features John Lennon.

9 November 1989 – fall of the Berlin Wall.Construction of the wall commenced in 1961 and was completed in 1962, to separate the Communist controlled East Berlin from the capitalist West Berlin. The Communist government claimed that it was to protect East Germany from Fascist forces in West Germany, although it was mainly to prevent the mass defections from the Eastern bloc. Between the end of World War II and the construction of the Wall, more than 3.5 million people defected to the West. The Wall was more than 140km long, with numerous guard towers and check-points. It symbolised the ‘Iron Curtain’, which was used to describe the attempts of Europe’s Eastern bloc, including the Soviet Union, to severely restrict contact with the West.