The Siege of Leningrad was one of the longest and costliest battles in history, lasting 872 days and resulting in 1.5 million Russian casualties and an additional 1.5 million evacuees. The failure of the Germans to take the city marked a significant turning point in the war, and to this day it remains an important part of Russian national identity. The underlying cause of most of the deaths in Leningrad was not military action but starvation, as the stalemated Germans changed tactics to simply starve out the entire population. This first-hand account talks about tens of thousands of people dying month after month from hunger and deprivation.
Though the people of Leningrad were forced to eat their pets and any other animals they could catch just to survive, this English Russia post honors the cats of Leningrad who are memorialized by statues all over the city (once again called St. Petersburg, of course). The cats who were lucky enough not to become food themselves were crucial to the city to keep the exploding rat population in check. Indeed, the post points out that 5000 cats were gathered up from all over Russia and sent to Leningrad to aid in rodent control. Sadly, it’s safe to assume that the cats also ended up aiding the starving citizens, but at least one cat outlasted the blockade and became a national hero:
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
Thanks to Shelley for alerting me that last night’s edition of the local TV newsmagzine “Chronicle” featured Harvard Humanist Chaplain Greg Epstein, whom I blogged about recently in conjunction with the various atheist billboard campaigns around the country. I was busy helping Charlotte do her homework, so I didn’t watch the show, but WCVB’s [...]
