Free Republic

(RNS) Tackling a delicate issue as it begins its yearlong celebration of the Reformation’s 500th anniversary, Germany’s main Protestant church has officially renounced its mission to convert Jews to Christianity. In practice, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), made up of 20 regional Lutheran, Reformed and United churches, mostly gave up efforts to convert Jews in the decades after the Holocaust, and closing that chapter should have been a formality. But officially abandoning the “Judenmission,” or Mission to the Jews, turned out to be theologically complicated. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus gave his Apostles the Great Commission to “make disciples of...

“The president is dead.” For those of us who can remember those words from 50 years ago, they are seared into our brains like letters sand-blasted into a granite headstone forever: clear, succinct, and unmistakable in meaning. How could this be? Things like this did not happen, especially in the America of 1963. But then a few days later, John-John, in his little top coat and short pants, saluted as the caisson went by holding his dad’s body covered by our flag. It was real all right, no doubt about it. I had a personal connection to John Fitzgerald Kennedy....

THREE SHOTS FIRED AT PRESIDENT KENNEDY'S MOTORCADE TODAY IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS. That was the United Press International bulletin that came over the clattering teletype machine. It was early afternoon Friday, Nov. 22, 1963 -- 53 years ago today. I looked at the bulletin in shock. I turned to tell someone, but there was no one in sight. I was at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. I was a young reporter for the Boston Herald Traveler checking out the Canadian ambassador to the United States who was speaking at a luncheon of bankers and financie

41 years ago today the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior with all 29 hands on board in one of the most violent storms in Great Lakes history.

McKinley wins in electoral landslide. Full edition of the New York Tribune at the link.

It is unclear if NATO aircraft were involved in helping secure Gaddafi's capture by Libyan forces on the ground. A group of rebels approached the pipe where Gaddafi was hiding and ordered him to come out, which he did, albeit slowly. He was then dragged up to his feet as rebels shouted "Muammar, Muammar!" Gaddafi was killed shortly afterwards. There are conflicting reports; according to one report, Gaddafi said "Please don't shoot!" prior to being shot, and when questioned by Misratan rebel fighters about the damage done to Misrata by his forces, denied any involvement, and begged his captors not...

OAKLAND, Calif. (KGO) -- Fifty years ago this month in Oakland, a revolutionary group was founded and now the city is honoring the Black Panthers with a week of activities and a museum exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California.

This month marks the 43rd anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. We have been fed some false information about this war. For starters, Israel did not strike first unlike in the 1967 Six day war when Israel was forced to launch a pre-emptive strike as her enemies amassed on her borders and as the UN stood aside and allowed them to do so. The Arabs shot first  On the night of September 25, King Hussein secretly flew to Tel Aviv to warn Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir of an impending Syrian attack. Throughout September, Israel received eleven more warnings...

NEW YORK — For a time, Occupy Wall Street was everywhere with its grass-roots encampments — first in New York City, then globally — and the refrain, “We are the 99 percent!” And then it was gone. Its most famous camp in lower Manhattan was cleared out in an overnight police raid two months after it started, and other Occupy locations fizzled soon thereafter. But five years later, demonstrators gathered once again in New York’s Zuccotti Park on Saturday to commemorate the movement and what they said has been its lasting impact.....

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-enduring-lessons-of-star-trek

Randall and Vicki Weaver and their children wanted nothing more than to be left to live an isolated life in peace in their cabin enclave on a northern Idaho mountain top called Ruby Ridge. Untrusting of the federal government and of the belief society had taken an insurmountable turn for the worse, the Weavers — as many residents in the remote and breathtaking area — taught their children to be self-sufficient and defend themselves with firearms from unwanted intrusions onto the family’s property. But the Weaver’s seemingly idyllic life came to an appallingly violent end over several hours from August...

When back in June 2015 Donald Trump announced he was running for president, he said during his speech, “I will find the General Patton or I will find General MacArthur. I will find the right guy. I will find the guy that’s going to take that military and make it really work.” Since then, Trump has frequently mentioned Douglas MacArthur in his speeches. It is worth discussing his importance in American history, especially as we are approaching the 66th anniversary of Battle of Inchon. While MacArthur’s greatest achievement was the creation of modern Japan, the Inchon landing on September 15,...

A commemoration ceremony for the 50th anniversary of the battle of Long Tan in Vietnam has been cancelled. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed Vietnamese authorities had cancelled Thursday's Veterans Day at the Long Tan cross site. The department said it understood private access to the site was still permitted and the advice of exercising normal safety precautions in Vietnam was still current. Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop said in a statement the Vietnamese government had advised it would not permit the ceremony to go ahead. An official party including the Australian and New Zealand ambassadors will still...

A legendary battle of western history: Today is the anniversary of the battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. Thermopylae is a pass in east central Greece between the cliffs of Mount Oeta and the Malic Gulf, and in ancient times, it was a principal entrance into southern Greece from the north. It was there that the Greeks confronted the third Persian expedition of the Persian Wars - an army of as many as a half-million men under Xerxes. When they found that their position had been turned, however, the Greeks retreated precipitously - all except for a 300-strong Spartan contingent...

Today marks the 25 anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee launching the first website CREDIT: AP On this day 25 years ago the world's first website went live to the public. The site, created by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was a basic text page with hyperlinked words that connected to other pages.Berners-Lee used the public launch to outline his plan for the service, which would come to dominate life in the twenty-first century."The WWW project merges the techniques of information retrieval and hypertext to make an easy but powerful global information system," said Berners-Lee on the world's first public website. "The project...

In remembrance ... today marks the 5th anniversary of the shoot down of Extortion 17. On August 6, 2011, the U.S. Navy SEALs and the Special Ops community suffered a huge loss when their CH-47 Chinook was shot down in Afghanistan. The 30 American deaths represent the greatest loss of U.S. military lives in a single incident in the decade-long war in Afghanistan that began in 2001. The Fallen: •SGT Alexander J. Bennett •SPC Spencer Duncan •CWO Bryan J. Nichols •CWO David R. Carter •SSG Patrick D. Hamburger •TSgt John W. Brown •SSgt Andrew W. Harvell •TSgt Daniel L. Zerbe...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Folks, today we are starting our 29th year. This is our 28th anniversary being behind the Golden EIB Microphone, and there's one thing... We're gonna play some sound bites here from the past. The theme that Cookie set up... She did this on her own, by the way. I offered no direction. I never do on these anniversary shows. She thought it would be interesting to go back and look at the number of different ways I have been characterized and portrayed in various places, by various people over -- not all but some of these --...

Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing in Detroit, Michigan. He was last seen alive in a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant the previous afternoon. To this day, Hoffa’s fate remains a mystery, although many believe that he was murdered by organized crime figures. By the time of his disappearance, Hoffa had a long and murky career in union politics. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he became the main focus of government investigations into corruption. In 1962, Hoffa faced misdemeanor charges in Tennessee. He managed to get a mistrial but was convicted two years...

Seventy-five years ago, the world blew up in just six months. World War II ostensibly started two years earlier, when Germany invaded Poland. In truth, after the rapid German defeat of Poland in September 1939, the conflict was mostly confined to Western Europe for nearly the next two years. By summer of 1940, only Britain had survived Hitler's European victories. The dormant European war only went global on June 22, 1941, when Germany suddenly surprise-attacked the Soviet Union, its former partner. America and Asia were still not directly involved in the 1941 expansion of the war until the Japanese attacked...

The Texas Standard spoke to nearly 100 survivors of the UT Tower shooting. Next week, you can hear their stories. Dallas. Baton Rouge. Nice. Orlando. It seems like we can’t go more than a few days without a violent event somewhere in the world. While it’s true these attacks are happening for very different and very complicated reasons – they keep happening. It’s almost hard to remember a time when they didn’t. But when a shooter took aim at the University of Texas of Austin campus from the top of the UT tower on August 1, 1966, no one had...