http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44060292/ns/travel-news/ A city divided The Berlin Wall was erected to separate East and West Berlin following the wider partition of Germany after the Second World War. Standing from 1961 to 1989, it became a symbol of the broader Cold War conflict. Half-controlled by Western forces, the city was geographically in the middle of the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany and became a focal point for tensions between the NATO allies and the communist Eastern Bloc. In this image, the Brandenburg Gate is seen behind barbed wire in 1962. (John Waterman / Fox Photos via Getty Images) By Chris Rodell msnbc.com contributor updated 8/12/2011 3:38:38 PM ET Fifty years ago, the Soviet-controlled German Democratic Republic began…

August 6, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/world/middleeast/07israel.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=world By ISABEL KERSHNER HORASHIM, Israel — When 20 people gathered for a modest ceremony in the tranquil cemetery of this kibbutz in central Israel last month, the intimacy and quiet dignity of the event belied the tumultuous historical forces coursing beneath it. The occasion was the reinterring of the remains of Samuel Merlin, a founder of a small but brazen band of militant Zionists and Holocaust rescue activists who shook America and challenged the Jewish establishment in the 1940s, but who until recently have been largely excluded from official Holocaust history. The activists, known as the Bergson group, have been credited by modern historians with playing…

Jul 30, 1863: Chief Pocatello signs peace treaty. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 3:11, July 30, 2011, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/chief-pocatello-signs-peace-treaty. The Shoshone chief Pocatello signs the Treaty of Box Elder, bringing peace to the emigrant trails of southern Idaho and northern Utah. Pocatello was a Bannock Shoshone, one of the two major Shoshone tribes that dominated modern-day southern Idaho. Once a large and very powerful people, the Shoshone lost thousands to a smallpox epidemic in 1781. The fierce Blackfoot Indians took further advantage of the badly weakened Shoshone to push them off the plains and into the mountains. The first representatives of a people who would soon prove even more dangerous than the Blackfoot…

July 28, 2010 by Shannon Firth Her pillbox hat, her love of family and her passion for the arts compose the portrait of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. As a young widow, she protected the late President Kennedy’s reputation from critics. Eventually, she tuned out public opinion, married a wealthy shipping mogul and raised her children abroad. After her second husband’s death, Jackie pursued her lifelong dream, living quietly among New York’s literati as a book editor. Jackie Kennedy’s Early Days Jacqueline Lee Bouvier was born on July 28, 1929, in Southampton, New York, daughter of Janet Lee and John “Black Jack” Bouvier, a handsome stockbroker. Jackie had one younger sister, Caroline Lee.…

HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY IMAGES Machu Picchu, Circa, 1930 Machu Picchu, often called the “Lost City of the Incas, sits at 2,350 meters above sea level in the heart of the Urubamba valley in southern Peru. Many archaeologists believe that it was built as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti (1438-1472). Rest of Article here

U.S. postal system established. (2011). The History Channel website. Retrieved 5:14, July 26, 2011, from http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/us-postal-system-established. On this day in 1775, the U.S. postal system is established by the Second Continental Congress, with Benjamin Franklin as its first postmaster general. Franklin (1706-1790) put in place the foundation for many aspects of today’s mail system. During early colonial times in the 1600s, few American colonists needed to send mail to each other; it was more likely that their correspondence was with letter writers in Britain. Mail deliveries from across the Atlantic were sporadic and could take many months to arrive. There were no post offices in the colonies, so mail was…