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Facing domestic unrest, including a Maoist insurgency, the Nepalese royal family never suspected that the greatest threat to the monarchy lived within the palace walls. On June 1, 2001, Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal got drunk and high (as he often did). Stumbling into the royal dining hall, the prince gunned down King Birendra, Queen […]
Hong Kong-born U.S. Foreign Service Officer Edward Loo migrated to the United States as an infant, and went on to serve in Taiwan at the time of the infamous 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre — and in mainland China during the period of martial law that followed. Loo’s career as a Foreign Service Officer spanned nearly […]
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) had invaded Lebanon in June 1982 with the goal of pushing out the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). After newly-elected President Bashir Gemayel was assassinated on September 14th, the IDF invaded West Beirut, which included the Sabra neighborhood and the Shatila refugee camp, which predominately housed Muslim refugees. The IDF ordered […]
As the civil war in Syria drags on with no end in sight, the humanitarian toll of the conflict becomes increasingly dire. The brutal crackdown carried out by Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s tyrannical president, initially targeted pro-democracy demonstrators but has since taken a sectarian turn as conservative Islamic groups fight the secular regime that prohibited groups […]
In 1980, a democratization movement spread throughout South Korea following the assassination of Park Chung-hee, which ended his 18-year authoritarian rule and brought political instability to the country. General Chun Doo Hwan took power as the new president through a coup in December 1979 and expanded martial law soon after in attempt to suppress increasing […]
The Tiananmen Square Massacre of June 1989, and the subsequent months of intimidation, deception and violence, shattered the façade of Chinese political solidarity and severely damaged Sino-American relations. The crackdown followed weeks of protests after the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang, when tens of thousands of peaceful protesters gathered in Tiananmen Square to demand […]
The 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square was one of the most heart-wrenching displays of state suppression of peaceful assembly in recent history. Following the death of pro-reform Communist leader Hu Yaobang in April 1989, thousands of Chinese students gathered in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to march in his memory. Within days the gathering had transformed into […]
Jonestown, Guyana was the scene of one of the most harrowing tragedies in American history. On November 18, 1978, at the direction of charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, 909 members of the People’s Temple died, all but two from apparent cyanide poisoning, in a “revolutionary suicide.” They included over 200 murdered children. The poisonings in […]
In the midst of war, terrorism, and instability, Stephen Kontos was tasked with uniting a coalition to combat one of the Middle East’s greatest terrorist threats—The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. Through their work, Kontos and his team turned a cramped conference room of a dozen people into a dedicated coalition of over […]
Korean Christianity appears to observers as embedded in Korean history and tradition. However, this is not the case, as Korean Christianity is still a minority religion and only entered mainstream South Korean society during the mid-twentieth century, when many American Christian missionaries began evangelizing in South Korea. One of them was a young Methodist Missionary […]
