Today In History

Manfred von Richthofen, better known as Red Baron, was a German military aviator born in 1892. He was the pilot who managed to shoot down eighty enemy airplanes during World War I before being slaughtered the morning of April 21, 1918 near the River Somme, In the north of France.

Hero of the Germans, respected by his enemies during the First World War, allowed to escape his badly injured victims. His unit was responsible for the demolition of 151 British airplanes, against 66 of the own ones, during the month of April of 1917. For that reason it received the medal Pour le Mérite.

Its planes, the biplane hunting Albatros D.II and then the triplane Fokker Dr.I, allowed a wide capacity of maneuvers and pirouettes. However, most of his victories in aerial combat obtained them in an airplane Albatros type.

According to official sources, it was Canadian captain Roy Brown who managed to kill the German pilot, although new research suggests that it was Australian infantryman William John "Snowy" Evans who fired from the ground the .303 bullet that ended with his life. The bullet entered the right side of the chest and wounded the lungs, liver, heart, aorta and vena cava before leaving. According to the opinion of the forensicists, he hardly counted on one minute before losing consciousness and only a couple of them in dying. Little is known about the soldier Evans, other than that he died in 1925, and probably died without imagining that he could be the cause of death of the most famous pilot in history. Roy Brown wrote a book about his fighting and detailed everything about the Baron's last flight.

He was buried with all the military honors by the same British, who paid tribute to him. His coffin - covered with flowers as an offering - was carried by six members of squadron 209. At the time of burial, Australian soldiers presented arms and threw three salutes in his honor. On his tombstone, which is in the same place where he fell, you can read his epitaph:

"Here lies a brave man, a noble adversary and a true man of honor. Rest in peace."

31 anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster

31 years ago in the night 1:23 there was an explosion in the fourth reactor, Chernobyl due to fatal errors in the design of the reactor and negligence of staff

Today is the anniversary of the tragic event for France:

Occupation of the German troops of Paris