This Day In History

Sep 9 1942
On orders of Heinrich Himmler, Auschwitz prisoners are forced to exhume and burn 107,000 decaying corpses from the camp's mass graves. They are cremated in gigantic, open-pit bonfires.

Sep 9 1999
A bomb planted by Chechen terrorists explodes in a Moscow apartment building on Guryanov Street, killing more than 90 people. It is part of a series of apartment bombings in Russia leaving more than 400 dead.

This Day In History

Jul 2 1881
President James A. Garfield is shot in a train station by Charles Julius Guiteau, a lunatic trying to become ambassador either to Austria or France. Garfield lingers for three months before finally dying.

Jul 2 1937
Attempting to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane, Amelia Earhart disappears over the Pacific with her navigator, Fred Noonan.

Jul 2 1942
On page six, the New York Times reports Germany's mass extermination of 700,000 Jews, by use of poison gas.

Jul 2 1947
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot witness a "large glowing object" zoom across the sky at 400 or 500 miles per hour. The next day, Mac Brazel discovers the wreckage of a flying saucer -- not fragments of an experimental balloon composed of neoprene -- on a remote pasture outside Roswell, New Mexico.

Jul 2 1961
In the tile-covered foyer of his home in Ketchum, Idaho, novelist Ernest Hemingway commits suicide with his favorite shotgun. When the body was later found, "only his chin, mouth, and vestigial scraps of his cheeks were still connected to his body."

Jul 2 1982
UC Berkeley electrical engineering professor Diogenes Angelakos picks up an unattended package in Cory Hall. The pipe bomb hidden inside the parcel explodes, shredding the man's right hand. Coincidentally, Angelakos is present three years later, when the Unabomber claims a second victim in the computer science department, John Hauser.

Jul 2 1994
Colombian soccer star Andres Escobar is shot twelve times outside a bar in Bogota, and dies on the spot. Only ten days prior, Escobar had inadvertently scored a goal for the American team in the 1994 World Cup playoffs, resulting in a first-round elimination for Colombia.

This Day In History

Jun 10 1942
The town of Lidice (Loditz) is liquidated by the Nazis as penalty for the assassination of Adolf Hitler's favorite general, Reinhard Heydrich. Every adult male is killed, the women sent to the camps, and the town bulldozed.

Jun 10 1973
The 17-year-old grandson of J. Paul Getty is abducted in Rome. When the kidnappers demand a $17 million ransom, the billionaire refuses. "I have 14 other grandchildren, and if I pay one penny now, then I will have 14 kidnapped grandchildren." After the grandson's severed ear arrives in the mail, Getty finally coughs up the money.

Jun 10 1980
Percy Wood, president of United Airlines, receives a parcel at his home in Lake Forest, Illinois. Inside is a copy of the book Ice Brothers by Sloan Wilson. When he opens the book, it suddenly explodes, throwing shrapnel into Wood's hands, face, and thigh. The book turns out to be a present from the Unabomber.

This Day In History

Jun 4 1939
After already having been turned away by Cuba, the SS St. Louis is also denied permission to land in Florida. So it is forced to return to Europe with its cargo of 963 Jewish refugees, most of whom will later die in Nazi concentration camps.

Jun 4 1989
645 rail passengers are killed in a natural gas explosion near Ufa, Russia. Their two trains are torn apart as they pass each other, throwing sparks near a leaky pipeline.

New Arrests Made in Killing of Auschwitz Survivor

NEW YORK (CNN) -- Two additional suspects in the strangulation of an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor were arrested Friday, the Manhattan district attorney's office said.

Aljulah Cutts, 27, and his brother Hasib, 30, were taken into custody in Manhattan in connection with the death last week of Guido Felix Brinkmann, the district attorney's office said.

A spokeswoman declined to specify what, if any, connection the men are suspected to have had to the victim or to a woman previously arrested in the case.

Police also would not say what charges the two might face.

The woman, Angela Murray, 30, of the Bronx, was arraigned Sunday on one count of murder in the second degree and three counts of robbery in the case.

Brinkmann was found dead in the bedroom of his apartment July 30, his hands tied behind his back, police said. A safe was missing from the apartment, and his car had been stolen.

Brinkmann, a native of Latvia, was held in the Mauthausen, Ebensee and Auschwitz camps during World War II.

After the war, he and his wife, who also survived Auschwitz, came to America.

In 1971, Brinkmann co-founded Adam's Apple disco in Manhattan, and later was the real estate manager of a mixed-use building in the Bronx, according to his son, Rick Brinkman, who uses a different spelling for his last name.

Brinkmann's wife died last year.

New Photo Emerges: Nazis Dig Up Mass Grave of U.S. Soldiers

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The photograph is a jarring image that shows Nazi party members, shovels in hand, digging up graves of American soldiers held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.

While the men dig up the site, U.S. soldiers investigating war crimes stand over them. Two crosses with helmets placed atop them -- the sign of a fallen soldier -- are visible.

Two Germans are knee deep in mud. Another, with a handlebar mustache, has the look of a defeated man. The bodies of 22 American soldiers were found in at least seven graves, according to the photographer. [Rest of article]