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Bodies of massacre victims, many with hands still bound

The Hill 303 massacre was a war crime that took place during the Korean War on August 17, 1950, on a hill above Waegwan, South Korea, when forty-one US Army soldiers held as prisoners of war were murdered. Troops of the North Korean People's Army (KPA) surrounded elements of the US 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, during the Battle of Pusan Perimeter. Most of the US troops escaped but one platoon misidentified KPA troops as South Korean reinforcements and was captured. US forces counterattacked and as the KPA began to retreat one of their officers ordered the prisoners to be shot so they would not slow them down. US commanders subsequently broadcast radio messages and dropped leaflets demanding that senior KPA commanders be held responsible. The KPA commanders, concerned about the way their soldiers were treating prisoners of war, laid out stricter guidelines for handling captives. Memorials were later constructed on Hill 303 to honor the victims of the massacre. (Full article...)

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Tayaw kinpun

... that the traditional shampoo tayaw kinpun (pictured) has been used by successive Burmese kings to wash their hair ritually to cast away evil, and augment their powers?
... that Roland Jefferson, the first African-American botanist to work at the U.S. National Arboretum, helped preserve the famous flowering cherry trees in Washington, D.C.?
... that Gandhi's statue in the Indian parliament is frequently used as a protest site by members of parliament?
... that Rogers Covey-Crump, once the high tenor of the Hilliard Ensemble, is known as a leading Evangelist in Bach's Passions?
... that after the tower of a New York state TV station was toppled by Hurricane Hazel, it did not return to the air for more than 18 months?
... that in 1944, at the age of 18, Trevor Hill was responsible for broadcasting Eisenhower's D-Day announcement of the Normandy landings?
... that Gleaners Food Bank has served more than 700 million pounds (320 million kg) of food in Indiana?
... that AMTD Digital had a market value greater than the Coca-Cola Company, Costco or McDonald's after its stock price rose 21,000 percent in a matter of days?

In the news

Salman Rushdie

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A mass fish kill occurs in the river Oder in Poland and Germany.
A mass shooting in Cetinje, Montenegro, leaves 11 people dead and 6 others injured.

On this day

August 17: Independence Day in Indonesia (1945)

Sukarno proclaiming Indonesia's independence, with Hatta on the right

986 – Byzantine–Bulgarian wars: The Bulgarians defeated Byzantine forces at the Battle of the Gates of Trajan near present-day Ihtiman, with Emperor Basil II barely escaping.
1560 – The Scottish Reformation Parliament approved a Protestant confession of faith, initiating the Scottish Reformation and disestablishing Catholicism as the national religion.
1945 – The independence of Indonesia was proclaimed by Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta (pictured), igniting a revolution against the Dutch Empire.
1959 – American musician Miles Davis released Kind of Blue, which became one of the best-selling and most critically acclaimed jazz recordings of all time.
2008 – Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympics, the most golds by any person at a single games.

Matthew Boulton (d. 1809)
Leslie Groves (b. 1896)
Maureen O'Hara (b. 1920)

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Today's featured picture

The Omega Nebula is an H II region, a type of emission nebula, in the constellation Sagittarius. It was discovered by Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1745. Charles Messier catalogued it in 1764 as number 17 in his set of comet-like astronomical objects. The nebula is by some of the richest starfields of the Milky Way, in the northern two-thirds of Sagittarius. This astrophotograph of the Omega Nebula was taken by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), located at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile. Captured by OmegaCAM, the VST's wide-field camera, in 2011, the photograph was the telescope's first image to be released.

Photograph credit: ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM

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