Twentieth Century
Nansen Passports
Passports, visas, residence and work permits, and journalists’ overseas accreditations have been a recurring thread in my work for the last few years*—the inevitable result of writing about an American journalist who spent much of her life in Europe. Working her way through bureaucratic red tape to be sure she had the correct permissions to…
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And Speaking of X-rays….
Several of you responded to my recent post on the subject with interesting information about the early use of x-rays.* This story caught my imagination for several reasons that will be obvious to those of you who are regular visitors here on the Margins: When World War I broke out in 1914, Marie Curie (already…
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Operation Cornflakes
On February 5, 1945, near the end of WWII, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) began a widespread propaganda campaign in Germany with the unwitting help of the German postal service. As a first step, Allied bombers derailed a German mail train, scattering its cargo in the process. A second wave of bombers followed and…
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