Above, a group of East German soldiers peer into West Germany through a section of the Berlin Wall that has been pulled open twenty years ago today.

More photos at the Cold War Museum

Below are the two images.  The original is on the top, the doctored photo below it.  It is obvious by the shading of the sky around the middle missile that image alteration had occured.  Another tip-off is the direct copy-paste of that bump on the ground, and the general fuzziness of portions of the desert floor.  The photo editors at the media outlets that took this photo as true really screwed this up.  A simple glance at the image shows that it has been changed.

The image below shows where the obvious signs of tampering are:

From its pre-war inception, the aircraft was touted as a strategic weapon; a potent, high-flying, long-range bomber capable of unleashing great destruction, and able to defend itself. With the ability to return home despite extensive damage, its durability, especially in belly-landings and ditchings, quickly took on mythic proportions.

The B-17 Flying Fortress has become, for various reasons, somewhat of an icon of American power and a symbol of its Air Force. It achieved a lasting fame in the general public, which has eluded most other bomber aircraft.

If you’re anywhere near Montgomery, Alabama this weekend, you can even get a ride in this legendary aircraft. The Liberty Belle, a fully restored B-17, will be at the Montgomery Regional Airport on May 10th. For $430, you can experience a piece of WWII history and take a 30 minute flight. Passengers will be seated for takeoff and landing, but will be permitted to move between the combat crew positions during the flight.

For more information, visit www.libertyfoundation.org, or call (918) 340-0243.

He was only 15 years old when he joined the Army and was deployed to war overseas on a ship called the Carpathia - the very same ship used in the rescue mission of the Titanic.

The festivities honoring Buckles included a tour of Washington, and was part of a series of events to honor the veterans of World War I, which included the opening of a photographic display at the Pentagon yesterday.

More photos

After WWII, Churchill ordered the computer destroyed, fearing that Britain’s national security would be threatened if the machine’s secrets were known.  However, in 1994 a group banded together to piece Colossus back together, and this week, a rebuilt Colossus took part in a contest to decipher an encrypted radio message.

The WWII relic was no match for modern technology, however, as it was beaten by a home computer, and one from Germany, at that!   Software engineer Joachim Schueth, from Bonn Germany was able to decipher the message, encrypted by a Nazi-era Lorenz cipher machine and transmitted by radio from Paderborn, Germany. It took him about two hours on Thursday, Nov. 15th, using ham radio equipment and a computer program he wrote especially for the challenge.  

Schueth paid tribute to Colossus and those who used it during WWII, saying their work was important to Germans because “it helped to shorten the lifetime of the Nazi dictatorship.”

More info about Schueth is available on his webpage. 

The plan, dubbed Project X-Ray, was to place many bats inside a bomb-like capsule (pictured at right) with a parachute.  When the capsule was dropped over Japan, it would slowly descend and open, releasing the bats.  The bats, with napalm incendiary devices tied to their legs, would fly out and roost in buildings.  Their incendiary devices would go off, buildings would burn down, and the Japanese would find their cities devastated by a chaotic firestorm. 

While the project never reached completion, it was approved by President Roosevelt, and considerable research and testing money was invested.  Indeed, if the project had been pursued all the way, some success may have been seen, as during testing in New Mexico, flaming bats inadvertently  burned down a number of structures on the Auxiliary Army Air Base in Carlsbad.

The battle was marked by some of the toughest fighting of the war. Japanese positions on the island were heavily fortified, with bunkers, hidden artillery, and miles upon miles of tunnels.

The battle was the first American attack on the Japanese Islands and the Japanese defended their positions tenaciously. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, over 20,000 were killed and only a few hundred were taken prisoner.

Below is a documentary that includes rare color footage of the battle of Iwo Jima.