This Day In History

Dec 16
My father, Robert Aubrey was born. Happy Birthday, dad!



Dec 16 1920
In Kansu, China, an 8.6 earthquake kills 180,000 people, mostly from building collapses. But 20,000 froze later because they were unwilling to reoccupy housing during the winter.

Dec 16 1943
At Auschwitz, Dr. Horst Schumann was radiating genitals of Jewish men and women. After a time their genitals were removed and sent to Berlin. Records from his experiments do not survive intact, but the daysheet for today indicates 90 castrations. What were they doing with all those balls?

Dec 16 1950
To fight "world conquest by communist imperialism" in Korea, President Truman declares a state of National Emergency. The order is still in effect, one of four current states of national emergency granting extraordinary powers. We must be fools.

Dec 16 1954
In San Carlos, Venezuela, a hairy dwarf creature attacks residents, then flees into a hovering disk shaped UFO. The creatures escape.

Dec 16 1977
The pinnacle of the Disco era attained with the release of the polyester-clad film Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta.



Dec 16 1985
John Gotti has Gambino boss Paul Castellano whacked at Spark's Steak House in Manhattan.

This Day In History

May 20 1989
Attempting to clear Tiananmen Square of student activists and quell 100 million others protesting throughout the country, China declares martial law in Beijing. Two weeks later, after they continue to loiter in the Square, thousands of students are massacred by government troops.

May 20 1999
The dissolving body parts of eight people are discovered inside six plastic barrels sitting in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, Australia.

Exclusive: Man in Disguise Boards International Flight

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- Canadian authorities are investigating an "unbelievable" incident in which a passenger boarded an Air Canada flight disguised as an elderly man, according to a confidential alert obtained by CNN.

The incident occurred on October 29 on Air Canada flight AC018 to Vancouver originating in Hong Kong. An intelligence alert from the Canada Border Services Agency describes the incident as an "unbelievable case of concealment."

"Information was received from Air Canada Corporate Security regarding a possible imposter on a flight originating from Hong Kong," the alert says. "The passenger in question was observed at the beginning of the flight to be an elderly Caucasian male who appeared to have young looking hands. During the flight the subject attended the washroom and emerged an Asian looking male that appeared to be in his early 20s."

After landing in Canada, Border Services Officers (BSOs) escorted the man off the plane where he "proceeded to make a claim for refugee protection," the alert says.

"The subject initially claimed to be in possession of one bag; however, flight crew approached the BSOs with two additional pieces of luggage which were believed to belong to the subject. One bag contained the subject's personal clothing items while the second contained a pair of gloves. The third contained a 'disguise kit' which consisted of a silicone type head and neck mask of an elderly Caucasian male, a brown leather cap, glasses and a thin brown cardigan."

The man put on the disguise for the officers who "noted he very much resembled an elderly Caucasian man, complete with mimicking the movements of an elderly person. The subject admitted at this time that he had boarded the flight with the mask on and had removed it several hours later," according to the alert.

"We can confirm that officials from the CBSA met a passenger arriving off AC018 Hong Kong to Vancouver on October 29 and the matter is still under investigation," said Air Canada spokesman Peter Fitzpatrick, who noted that "there are multiple identity checks before departure at the Hong Kong international airport, including Chinese government-run Hong Kong passport control, which Hong Kong originating passengers must undergo."

Hong Kong officials said they are aware of the incident and would call back with more information later.

Jennifer Bourque, regional communications officer for the CBSA, confirmed that "we intercepted an individual, on October 29, attempting to enter Canada under false pretenses on-board an Air Canada flight."

"CBSA can confirm that the foreign national is currently in CBSA detention," she said. "The individual will present before an IRB hearing. The officials of the CBSA will not disclose further information on this file."

Because of Privacy Act regulations, she said, she cannot provide details about specific cases.

"However, I can tell you that CBSA officers examine all passengers arriving on international flights at Vancouver International Airport," she said. "CBSA works closely with air carriers and local, national and international law enforcement partners, to ensure the safety of our borders and our communities. Getting the right information at the right time is a key element in keeping Canada's border closed to safety and security threats."

The agency would not discuss when or why the man put on the disguise or details about how he boarded the plane. But the alert indicated that the suspect boarded the plane with a board pass belonging to another passenger.

"It is believed that the subject and the actual United States Citizen passenger (whose date of birth is 1955) performed a boarding pass swap, with the subject using an Aeroplan card as identification to board the flight," the alert said.

Aeroplan is a credit card where card holders can earn frequent flyer miles.

S.I. Suspect Eric Bellucci Told Friend He Was With Mossad Before Slayings of His Parents

They got him! Good!
NY Daily News- A mentally ill Staten Island man's behavior grew increasingly bizarre in the weeks leading up to the bloody slaying of his parents, a friend and police sources said.

Eric Bellucci, 30, called an old friend from Stuyvesant High School in the month before his parents' bodies were found on Wednesday night and said he was working with Israeli intelligence.

"He seemed a little paranoid," the friend told the Daily News. "He told me that he was working with the Mossad."

The friend, who asked to remain anonymous, said his former football teammate was worried about terrorism and cited the attempted Times Square bombing.

Scores of mourners paid their respects to Arthur Bellucci, 61, and Marian Bellucci, 56, at their wake yesterday, surrounded by bright flowers and collages of family photos.

"There's a lot of rage right now - it's the way he killed them," one mourner said.

Harry Ritt, 64, of Staten Island, said he had been friends with "Artie" since they worked together at a Wall Street brokerage firm in 1981.


"He was a great guy - very well liked," he said.

A law enforcement source said Bellucci's dad was killed in bed and suffered wounds that led cops to believe he raised his arms in defense.

His mother was stabbed in the throat and tried to make a run for the telephone, leaving blood spatters down the steps, the source said.

Cops believe Bellucci showered, changed clothes and wrapped up any cuts he suffered in the bloodbath, the source said.

Cops said Bellucci ditched his SUV near Newark Airport and caught a flight to Israel.

He was in Israel trying to buy a ticket to China when he was nabbed on Friday. The NYPD was expecting him to be extradited this morning.

A law enforcement source said that after his capture, Bellucci bizarrely told authorities that he was there to avenge his parents and find the Mossad agent who killed them.

Less than a week before the killing, Bellucci sent an email to an ex-girlfriend offering her $500 for the name of each person who caused their breakup, a police source said.

His sister, Vanessa Bellucci, 25, told cops her brother was furious because she and her parents were trying to get him help, a police source said.

She went to the home on Wednesday because her mom and dad weren't answering the phone. She opened the door, saw blood and ran out to call 911.

Since then, former classmates from high school and Williams College, his alma mater, have been calling the NYPD to report his troubling behavior, police sources said.tmoore@nydailynews.com

September 11th UFO Sighting In China Comes to Light...Now?

The internet is flooding with news of a UFO sighting which shut down an Airport in China.. The incident happened Septmemer 11th, and I'm wondering why it's blowing up now..

Ninemsn.com- The US has long laid claim to being the world's UFO superpower — now China is giving it a run for its money.

A major Chinese airport was closed for an hour after an unidentified flying object was spotted overhead on September 11, according to ABC America.

Now footage of the alleged UFO has been posted online and received more than 200,000 hits on YouTube.

It shows a bright light darting across the night sky for around 30 seconds, before disappearing.

Authorities cancelled three flights from Beijing and Shanghai, and two more had to be diverted to other airports.

The incident at Baotou in the north-eastern Chinese region of Inner Mongolia is the eighth UFO sighting in just three months.

The first came at the end of June, now believed to have been a missile test.

Another incident on July 7 in the eastern Hangzhou region caused a media frenzy.

The crew on board a plane coming into land at the region's Xiaoshan airport reported seeing a UFO.

Authorities immediately closed the airport and 18 flights were cancelled.

An hour earlier residents nearby had spotted a UFO overhead — they took photos of the incident that were published in the local media.

Authorities later confirmed it was a test at a nearby military base.

The Chinese government has denied the September 11 incident took place at all.

The other sightings were in the eastern Hunan, Shandong and Jiangsu regions, and the north-western Xinjiang region.

UFO Closes Down Chinese Airport! What!

ABC News- An unidentified flying object (UFO) forced Xiaoshan Airport in Hangzhou, China to cease operations on July 7. A flight crew preparing for descent first detected the object around 8:40 p.m. and notified the air traffic control department. Aviation authorities responded within minutes, grounding outbound flights and diverting inbound ones to airports in Ningbo and Wuxi.

Eighteen flights were affected. Though normal operations resumed an hour later, the incident captured the attention of the Chinese media and sparked a firestorm of speculation on the UFO's identity.

"It is a hidden U.S. bomber flying toward China," one Internet user wrote on Monday. Another wrote on Sunday night, "In my opinion, the UFO is neither a U.S. missile nor a Russian satellite. Suggestions that it is extraterrestrial are even more preposterous. Everyone, use your head. This is clearly a man-made phenomenon. Would the U.S. or Russia risk provoking China's anger by firing a missile or satellite rocket in Chinese skies, without warning? I believe the Chinese military is responsible for the UFO. It is a new missile or aircraft being tested out."

Fueling speculations further, Hangzhou residents released photos, taken in the afternoon before the delays, of a hovering object bathed in golden light and exhibiting a comet-like tail. Less than an hour before the Xiaoshan airport shut down, residents said they also saw a flying object emitting red and white rays of light.

Resident Ma Shijun was taking a nighttime stroll with his wife when he saw the object.

"I felt a beam of light over my head. Looking up, I saw a streak of bright, white light flying across the sky, so I picked up the camera and took the photo. The time was 8:26 p.m. However, whether the object was a plane, or whether it was Xiaoshan Airport's UFO, I don't have a clear answer," Ma told the Xinhua news agency.

The photos taken by Hangzhou residents may be unrelated to the UFO that shut down Xiaoshan Airport. According to Hangzhou meteorological authorities, residents in the afternoon probably saw light reflecting off of an airplane. As for Ma's nighttime photo, Beijing Planetarium curator Zhu Jing told Xinhua that the object looks just like a plane shining its strobe lamps.

For now, the UFO's identity remains shrouded in mystery. A spokesman from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) confirmed to ABC News that the matter is under investigation. He declined to disclose further details. A day after the sighting, however, an anonymous source told China Daily that authorities already discovered the identity of the UFO after an investigation but could not publically disclose the information because "there was a military connection." An official explanation is expected to be released on Friday, the source said.

Trend Investigated After 7 Kids Die in Latest Attack on Chinese Kindergarten

Fox News- It's a parent's worst nightmare. And it's becoming a nightmare for China.

An attacker with a cleaver hacked to death seven children and two adults at a kindergarten in northwest China on Wednesday, the latest in a string of savage assaults on the country's schools. Eleven other children were wounded.

This latest incident at a kindergarten in northwest China was the fifth major attack on children in a couple of months.

Each assault involved a lone male.

Wednesday's killer, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, returned home after the attack on the outskirts of the city of Hanzhong and committed suicide, the local government reported.

Sociologists suggest it could be caused by a lack of help for the mentally ill in the country and also in part caused by therising stress levels caused by inequalities in Chinese society as some prosper and many struggle.

For someone who has visited China frequently over the past 20 years I have seen dramatic changes but it's nothing to what the people there must have felt.

Going from Maoist uniforms and bicycles to Gucci hand bags and Mercedes in a few short years would be a shock to anyone.

And it's probably an even bigger shock to the Chinese in comparison to other societies as its people have come out of a life that always prided itself during the Maoist years on equality and lack of materialism.

Of course as you travel in China it's easy to see the difference now between the upwardly mobile and those fighting to survive.

Amongst the glittering skyscrapers of Beijing or Shanghai there is sometimes a glimpse of the struggles many are facing.

Once I saw workers, all men, fighting their way to the front of a crowd to get a ticket off a foreman to get work for the day, perhaps at a building site.

There are also unbelievable pressures on Chinese men to be successful now.

China's one child policy has created a disproportionate number of males to females as Chinese families traditionally favor boys.

At a basic level the chinese male is now competing with a lot more males to be successful, get a bride and have a family.

It doesn't, of course, explain these series of attacks on children.

But it's not something that is unique to China.

Japan has had similar cases in the past.

The Chinese authorities seem to be trying to downplay the incidents in the media.

Their defense being that they don't want to start a wave of panic, and some experts in China say coverage could also inspire copycat attacks.

China Stripped of 2000 Olympic Bronze

Good! There's always cheating going on with the Olympic Games, which is ridiculous!
...Now after reading that the bronze goes to USA, I'm thinking that China's going to say we did this just to claim it for ourselves... Pshaw!!

(CNN) -- The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday stripped China of a bronze medal in the women's team event at the 2000 Olympic Games after finding one of the team's athletes was underage.

The United States will be awarded the bronze medal instead, the IOC said in a news release.

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) in February decided to cancel all results obtained by gymnast Dong Fangxiao at the Sydney, Australia, Games.

"The FIG conducted an inquiry which showed that the athlete was only 14 years old during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games," the IOC said. Under FIG qualification rules, athletes must be 16 in the year of the Games in order to compete.

The IOC's executive board on Wednesday decided to reallocate the results of the events that Dong participated in. She had placed sixth in the women's individual floor exercises and seventh in the women's individual vault.

Dong has been disqualified from all the events she participated in, which also included the women's individual uneven bars, the women's individual all-around and the women's individual balance beam.

Teenage Girl Dug Up To Be 'Corpse Bride'

Telegraph- The suspects included a grieving father who allegedly paid his four accomplices around £2,700 pounds to find a female to be his son's companion in the afterlife.

The men were caught after unearthing the remains of a teenage girl who had poisoned herself after failing her university entrance exams last year, a newspaper in Xianyang in China's Shaanxi province reported.

In rural China, superstitious villagers have for centuries sought out the bodies of recently deceased woman to be ghost brides for young men who die single.

Marriage ceremonies are conducted for the two corpses, and the bride is placed in the same grave as her husband.

Under Chairman Mao's rule, officials made strenuous efforts to stamp out the ghoulish practice but it has since resurfaced in some rural areas.

Last year, a gang in southern China was arrested for strangling young women to sell as ghost brides when the supply of female corpses in their area ran short.

24 Hurt in Hong Kong's Third Acid Attack in 6 Months

HONG KONG (CNN) -- Authorities in Hong Kong were reviewing surveillance tapes Tuesday to determine who tossed a bottle of acid from the top of a building, injuring 24 pedestrians in a busy shopping district.

Monday's incident was the third such attack in the Mong Kok district in the last six months. Police have not ruled out the possibility that they are the work of the same person.

The most recent attack occurred on Nielson Street Monday night when a bottle containing corrosive liquid was thrown from the top of a building, a police spokesman said.

Among the 24 people injured was a 4-year-old child, police said.

On May 16, 30 people were treated for burns after they were hit with two bottles of acid in the same area. Those pedestrians suffered various degrees of burns, none of which were serious, police said.

The May attack occurred on a Saturday around the same time in the same area with bottles containing similar liquids as one in December 2008 that left 46 people injured.

Authorities have set up a 24-hour hotline for information on the incidents and the government installed a new surveillance camera system in the area, worth 1.7 million Hong Kong dollars ($219,000).

Chinese Government: Smoke or Be Fined

"Officials in a county in central China have been told to smoke nearly a quarter million packs of locally made cigarettes annually or risk being fined, state media reports. The Gong'an county government in Hubei province has ordered its staff to puff their way through 230,000 packs of Hubei-produced cigarette brands a year, the Global Times said."

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