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.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hill_303_massacre> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1560: The Scottish Reformation Parliament approved a Protestant confession of faith, initiating the Scottish Reformation and disestablishing Catholicism as the national religion. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Reformation> 1945: The independence of Indonesia was proclaimed by Sukarno and Mohammad Hatta, igniting a revolution against the Dutch Empire. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_National_Revolution> 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. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kind_of_Blue> 2008: Michael Phelps won his eighth gold medal of the Beijing Summer Olympics, the most golds by any person at a single games. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Phelps> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: embrown: 1. (transitive) 2. To make (something) brown; to brown. 3. To make (something) dark or dusky (“having a rather dark shade of colour”); to brown, to darken. 4. (intransitive) 5. To become or make brown; to brown. 6. To become or make dark or dusky; to brown, to darken. <https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/embrown> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: The universal civilization has been a long time in the making. It wasn't always universal; it wasn't always as attractive as it is today. … the beauty of the idea of the pursuit of happiness. Familiar words, easy to take for granted; easy to misconstrue. This idea of the pursuit of happiness is at the heart of the attractiveness of the civilization to so many outside it or on its periphery. I find it marvelous to contemplate to what an extent, after two centuries, and after the terrible history of the earlier part of this century, the idea has come to a kind of fruition. It is an elastic idea; it fits all men. It implies a certain kind of society, a certain kind of awakened spirit. … So much is contained in it: the idea of the individual, responsibility, choice, the life of the intellect, the idea of vocation and perfectibility and achievement. It is an immense human idea. It cannot be reduced to a fixed system. It cannot generate fanaticism. But it is known to exist, and because of that, other more rigid systems in the end blow away. --V. S. Naipaul <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul> _______________________________________________ Wikipedia Daily Article mailing list. To unsubscribe write to: [email protected] Questions or comments? Contact [email protected]
