Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.

Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp located in Lower Saxony, Germany, near the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp in 1940, it was expanded to include a concentration camp in 1943. Bergen-Belsen became notorious for the horrendous conditions within the camp and the high mortality rate among its prisoners.

Unlike many other concentration camps, Bergen-Belsen was not a death camp equipped with gas chambers, but the death toll was exceedingly high due to starvation, lack of medical care, and the spread of infectious diseases such as typhus. The camp became increasingly overcrowded as prisoners were evacuated from camps closer to the front lines as Allied forces advanced into Germany.

Anne Frank, famous for her diary documenting her life in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands, died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, just a few weeks before the camp was liberated. Her exact date of death and the cause remain unknown, though it is presumed she died of typhus that ravaged the camp’s population.

Bergen-Belsen was liberated on April 15, 1945, by British forces. The soldiers found approximately 60,000 prisoners in the camp, many of whom were severely ill and starving. The conditions were so dire that more than 10,000 bodies lay unburied. The liberators were forced to take drastic measures, including burning the camp’s barracks to prevent the further spread of disease.

The liberation of Bergen-Belsen revealed the extent of the horrors of the Holocaust to the wider world, with images of the emaciated survivors and piles of deceased victims shocking the international community. Following the war, the camp served as a displaced persons camp, helping to resettle survivors. Today, Bergen-Belsen is a memorial site dedicated to remembering the victims and educating future generations about the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.

Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece

The 1896 Summer Olympics, also known as the Games of the I Olympiad, were the first modern Olympic Games held in Athens, Greece, from April 6 to April 15, 1896. The games were organized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and were inspired by the ancient Olympic Games that were held in Greece from the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD.

The 1896 Summer Olympics had 14 events in 9 sports, and 241 athletes from 14 countries participated. The sports included athletics, cycling, fencing, gymnastics, shooting, swimming, tennis, weightlifting, and wrestling. The events were held at various venues in Athens, including the Panathenaic Stadium, which had been rebuilt for the games and was used for the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as for the athletics events.

The United States won the most medals, with 11 gold, 7 silver, and 2 bronze, followed by Greece with 10 gold, 17 silver, and 19 bronze. The most successful individual athlete was Carl Schuhmann from Germany, who won four gold medals in gymnastics.

The 1896 Summer Olympics were considered a success, despite some organizational issues and the fact that many top athletes did not participate due to the short notice and the expense of traveling to Greece. The games were praised for their revival of the Olympic spirit and their celebration of international friendship and cooperation.

The success of the 1896 Summer Olympics led to the continuation of the modern Olympic Games, which have been held every four years since then, with the exception of the World War years.

McDonald’s restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois.

In the Belfast Blitz, two-hundred bombers of the German Luftwaffe attack Belfast, killing around one thousand people.

First flight of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress.

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Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.

Before there were smart phones and Google Maps, people relied on road atlases and paper maps stored in their glove boxes. The most ubiquitous of these was the always-handy Rand McNally Road Atlas.

It wasn’t until April 15, 1924, though, that the first Rand McNally Auto Chum – later to become the Road Atlas – was published. That auto chum included hand-drawn maps and no interstates, and it came without an index. But it was still a landmark for auto travel, which had previously been relatively ad hoc.

What began as a Chicago printing company in the 1850s quickly moved from producing railroad timetables to publishing railroad guides. As the company — founded by William Rand and Andrew McNally — moved into textbooks and globes, it only made sense for it to eventually print maps of the country’s new road networks as well. In 1904, it published its first automobile road map.

With car travel on the rise, figuring out how to get where you were going became increasingly important. In those early days of driving, Rand McNally actually developed the system of numbering highways that has since been widely adopted. It even posted the roadside signs on many highways. As the oil industry realized how useful maps could be in encouraging people to get out on the open road, Rand McNally began publishing maps for Gulf Oil Company service stations to distribute for free.

If you head out on a road trip today, you’ll probably rely on apps and digital directions. But if you want to explore the unknown out of cell service, don’t forget your road atlas.

The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.

ergen-Belsen, or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentration camp. Initially this was an “exchange camp”, where Jewish hostages were held with the intention of exchanging them for German prisoners of war held overseas. The camp was later expanded to accommodate Jews from other concentration camps.

After 1945 the name was applied to the displaced persons camp established nearby, but it is most commonly associated with the concentration camp. From 1941 to 1945, almost 20,000 Soviet prisoners of war and a further 50,000 inmates died there. Overcrowding, lack of food and poor sanitary conditions caused outbreaks of typhus, tuberculosis, typhoid fever and dysentery, leading to the deaths of more than 35,000 people in the first few months of 1945, shortly before and after the liberation.

The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945, by the British 11th Armoured Division. The soldiers discovered approximately 60,000 prisoners inside, most of them half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses, including those of Anne and Margot Frank, lying around the camp unburied. The horrors of the camp, documented on film and in pictures, made the name “Belsen” emblematic of Nazi crimes in general for public opinion in many countries in the immediate post-1945 period. Today, there is a memorial with an exhibition hall at the site.

When the British and Canadians advanced on Bergen-Belsen in 1945, the German army negotiated a truce and exclusion zone around the camp to prevent the spread of typhus. On April 11, 1945 Heinrich Himmler agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight. SS guards ordered prisoners to bury some of the dead. The next day, Wehrmacht representatives approached the British and were brought to VIII Corps. At around 1 a.m. on April 13, an agreement was signed, designating an area of 48 square kilometers around the camp as a neutral zone. Most of the SS were allowed to leave. Only a small number of SS men and women, including the camp commandant Kramer, remained to “uphold order inside the camp”. The outside was guarded by Hungarian and regular German troops. Due to heavy fighting near Winsen and Walle, the British were unable to reach Bergen-Belsen on April 14, as originally planned. The camp was liberated on the afternoon of April 15, 1945. The first two to reach the camp were a British Special Air Service officer, Lieutenant John Randall, and his jeep driver, who were on a reconnaissance mission and discovered the camp by chance.

When British and Canadian troops finally entered they found over 13,000 unburied bodies and around 60,000 inmates, most acutely sick and starving. The prisoners had been without food or water for days before the Allied arrival, partially due to allied bombing. Immediately before and after liberation, prisoners were dying at around 500 per day, mostly from typhus. The scenes that greeted British troops were described by the BBC’s Richard Dimbleby, who accompanied them:

“ …Here over an acre of ground lay dead and dying people. You could not see which was which… The living lay with their heads against the corpses and around them moved the awful, ghostly procession of emaciated, aimless people, with nothing to do and with no hope of life, unable to move out of your way, unable to look at the terrible sights around them … Babies had been born here, tiny wizened things that could not live … A mother, driven mad, screamed at a British sentry to give her milk for her child, and thrust the tiny mite into his arms, then ran off, crying terribly. He opened the bundle and found the baby had been dead for days.
This day at Belsen was the most horrible of my life.
”
Initially lacking sufficient manpower, the British allowed the Hungarians to remain in charge and only commandant Kramer was arrested. Subsequently, SS and Hungarian guards shot and killed some of the starving prisoners who were trying to get their hands on food supplies from the store houses. The British started to provide emergency medical care, clothing and food. Immediately following the liberation, revenge killings took place in the satellite camp the SS had created in the area of the army barracks that later became Hohne-Camp. Around 15,000 prisoners from Mittelbau-Dora had been relocated there in early April. These prisoners were in much better physical condition than most of the others. Some of these men turned on those who had been their overseers at Mittelbau. About 170 of these “Kapos” were killed on April 15, 1945. On April 20, four German fighter planes attacked the camp, damaging the water supply and killing three British medical orderlies.

Over the next days the surviving prisoners were deloused and moved to a nearby German Panzer army camp, which became the Bergen-Belsen DP camp. Over a period of four weeks, almost 29,000 of the survivors were moved there. Before the handover, the SS had managed to destroy the camp’s administrative files, thereby eradicating most written evidence.

The British forced the former SS camp personnel to help bury the thousands of dead bodies in mass graves. Some civil servants from Celle and Landkreis Celle were brought to Belsen and confronted with the crimes committed on their doorstep. Military photographers and cameramen of No. 5 Army Film and Photographic Unit documented the conditions in the camp and the measures of the British Army to ameliorate them. Many of the pictures they took and the films they made from April 15 to June 9, 1945 were published or shown abroad. Today, the originals are in the Imperial War Museum. These documents had a lasting impact on the international perception and memory of Nazi concentration camps to this day. According to Habbo Knoch, head of the institution that runs the memorial today: “Bergen-Belsen became a synonym world-wide for German crimes committed during the time of Nazi rule.”

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was then burned to the ground by flamethrowing “Bren gun” carriers and Churchill Crocodile tanks because of the typhus epidemic and louse infestation. As the concentration camp ceased to exist at this point, the name Belsen after this time refers to events at the Bergen-Belsen DP camp.

There were massive efforts to help the survivors with food and medical treatment, led by Brigadier Glyn Hughes, Deputy Director of Medical Services of 2nd Army, and James Johnston, the Senior Medical Officer. Despite their efforts, about another 9,000 died in April, and by the end of June 1945 another 4,000 had died. After liberation 13,994 people died.

Two specialist teams were dispatched from Britain to deal with the feeding problem. The first, led by Dr A. P. Meiklejohn, included 96 medical student volunteers from London teaching hospitals who were later credited with significantly reducing the death rate amongst prisoners. A research team led by Dr Janet Vaughan was dispatched by the Medical Research Council to test the effectiveness of various feeding regimes.

The first flight of the B-52 Stratofortress takes place.

The Titanic is struck by an iceberg and sinks.