Monthly Archives: March 2017

V-J Day Kiss in Times Square 1945

Iconic Pictures, , , ,

V-J Day in Times Square

V-J Day in Times Square (also V-Day and The Kiss)  is a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt that portrays a U.S. Navy sailor grabbing and kissing a stranger—a woman in a white dress—on Victory over Japan Day (“V-J Day”) in New York City‘s Times Square on August 14, 1945.

The photograph was published a week later in Life magazine, among many photographs of celebrations around the United States that were presented in a twelve-page section titled “Victory Celebrations”.

A two-page spread faces three other kissing poses among celebrators in Washington, D.C.; Kansas City; and Miami opposite Eisenstaedt’s, which was given a full-page display. Kissing was a favorite pose encouraged by media photographers of service personnel during the war, but Eisenstaedt was photographing a spontaneous event that occurred in Times Square soon before the announcement of the end of the war on Japan was made by U.S. President Harry S. Truman at seven o’clock. Similar jubilation spread quickly with the news.

 

800px-Kissing_the_War_Goodbye1

Because he was photographing rapidly changing events during the celebrations, Eisenstaedt did not have an opportunity to get the names and details.  The photograph does not clearly show the face of either person involved, and numerous people have claimed to be the subjects. The photograph was shot just south of 45th Street looking north from a location where Broadway and Seventh Avenue converge. Soon afterward, throngs of people crowded into the square and it became a sea of people.

The photograph was taken at 5:51 p.m. ET, according to Donald W. Olson and his team. It was taken with a Leica IIIa.

V-J Day in Times Square, a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, was published in Life in 1945 with the caption, “In New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers”

Alfred Eisenstaedt signing his famous “V-J Day” photograph on the afternoon of August 23, 1995, while sitting in his Menemsha Inn cabin located on Martha’s Vineyard. He died about 8 hours later.

Accounts by Alfred Eisenstaedt

In two different books he wrote, Alfred Eisenstaedt gave two slightly different accounts of taking the photograph and of its nature.

From Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt:

In Times Square on V.J. Day I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make a difference. I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder but none of the pictures that were possible pleased me. Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse. If she had been dressed in a dark dress I would never have taken the picture. If the sailor had worn a white uniform, the same. I took exactly four pictures. It was done within a few seconds.

Only one is right, on account of the balance. In the others the emphasis is wrong — the sailor on the left side is either too small or too tall. People tell me that when I am in heaven they will remember this picture.

From The Eye of Eisenstaedt:

I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all — young girls and old ladies alike. Then I noticed the nurse, standing in that enormous crowd. I focused on her, and just as I’d hoped, the sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her. Now if this girl hadn’t been a nurse, if she’d been dressed dark clothes, I wouldn’t have had a picture. The contrast between her white dress and the sailor’s dark uniform gives the photograph its extra impact.

It became a cultural icon overnight and by establishing his copyright, Eisenstaedt carefully controlled the rights to it, only allowing a limited number of reproductions which determined how it could be used

Another photograph of the same scene

U.S. Navy photo journalistVictor Jorgensen captured another view of the same scene, which was published in the New York Times the following day. Jorgensen titled his photograph Kissing the War Goodbye. It shows less of Times Square in the background, lacking the characteristic view of the complex intersection so that the location needs to be identified, it is dark and shows few details of the main subjects, and it does not show the lower legs and feet of the subjects.

Unlike the Eisenstaedt photograph, which is protected by copyright, this Navy photograph is in the public domain as it was produced by a federal government employee on official duty. While the angle of the photograph may be less interesting than that of Eisenstaedt’s photo, it clearly shows the actual location of the iconic kiss occurring in the front of the Chemical Bank and Trust building, with the Walgreens pharmacy signage on the building façade visible in the background.

The surprised woman on the left in Jorgensen’s photograph has been positively identified as Kay Hughes Dorius of Utah.

Identity of the kissers

Edith Shain’s claim as the nurse

Edith Shain at the 2008 Memorial Day parade in Washington, D.C.

Edith Shain wrote to Eisenstaedt in the late 1970s claiming to be the woman in the picture. In August 1945, Shain was working at Doctor’s Hospital in Manhattan, New York City as a nurse when she and a friend heard on the radio that World War II had ended. They went to Times Square where all the celebrating was and as soon as she arrived on the street from the subway, the sailor grabbed her in an embrace and kissed her. She related that at the time she thought she might as well let him kiss her since he fought for her in the war.

Shain did not claim that she was the woman in the white dress until many years later when she wrote to Eisenstaedt. He notified the magazine that he had received her letter claiming to be the subject.

Since the identity of the woman had been claimed, in its August 1980 issue, the editors of Life asked that the kissing sailor come forward. In the October 1980 issue, the editors reported that eleven men and three women had come forward claiming to be the subjects of the photograph. Listed in the October 1980 issue as claiming to be the woman were Greta Friedman and Barbara Sokol as well as Edith Shain.

On June 20, 2010, Shain died at age 91 of liver cancer.In April 2012 the issue of who the woman was, remained, as a new book on the topic was about to be released. The authors, George Galdorisi and Lawrence Verria, stated that Shain could not have been the woman because her height of just four feet ten inches was insufficient in comparison with the height of any of the men claiming to be the sailor.

Greta Friedman

Galdorisi and Verria used interviews of claimants, expert photo analysis, identifying people in the background and consultations with forensic anthropologists and facial recognition specialists. They concluded that the woman was Greta Zimmer Friedman and that she was wearing her dental hygienist uniform in the photograph.

“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed,” Friedman stated in a 2005 interview with the Library of Congress.

“The guy just came over and grabbed!” she said, adding, “That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me.”  “I did not see him approaching, and before I know it I was in this tight grip,” Friedman told CBS News in 2012.

Friedman died at age 92 on September 8, 2016, in Richmond, Virginia, due to health complications of old age.

Claiming to be the U.S. Navy sailor

Numerous men have claimed to be the sailor, including Donald Bonsack, John Edmonson, Wallace C. Fowler, Clarence “Bud” Harding, Walker Irving, James Kearney, Marvin Kingsburg, Arthur Leask, George Mendonça, Jack Russell, and Bill Swicegood. The issue regarding the identity of the kissers is no longer contended in a court of law.

George Mendonsa

 

George Mendonsa and Greta Friedman, guests of honor at the Bristol, Rhode Island, July 4 parade in 2009.
Image result for American sailor George Mendonsa

George Mendonsa of Newport, Rhode Island, on leave from the USS The Sullivans (DD-537), was watching a movie with his future wife, Rita, at Radio City Music Hall when the doors opened and people started screaming the war was over. George and Rita joined the partying on the street, but when they could not get into the packed bars decided to walk down the street. It was then that George saw a woman in a white dress walk by and took her into his arms and kissed her,

“I had quite a few drinks that day and I considered her one of the troops—she was a nurse.”

In one of the four pictures that Eisenstaedt took, Mendonsa claims that Rita is visible in the background behind the kissing couple.

In 1987, George Mendonsa filed a lawsuit against Time Inc. in Rhode Island state court, alleging that he was the sailor in the photograph and that both Time and Life had violated his right of publicity by using the photograph without his permission. After Time Inc. removed the case to federal court, Mendonsa survived a motion to dismiss.

Mendonsa was identified by a team of volunteers from the Naval War College in August 2005 as “the kisser”. His claim was based on matching his scars and tattoos to scars and tattoos in the photograph. They made their determination after much study including photographic analysis by the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who were able to match scars and tattoo spotted by photograph experts, and the testimony of Richard M. Benson, a photograph analysis expert, professor of photographic studies, plus the former Dean of the School of Arts at Yale University. Benson stated that

“it is therefore my opinion, based upon a reasonable degree of certainty, that George Mendonsa is the sailor in Mr. Eisenstaedt’s famous photograph.”

The identity of the sailor as George Mendonsa has been challenged by physicists Donald W. Olson and Russell Doescher of Texas State University and Steve Kawaler of Iowa State University based on astronomical conditions recorded by the photographs of the incident. According to Mendonsa’s account of the events of the day, the kiss would have occurred at approximately 2 p.m.

However, Olson and Doescher argue that the positions of shadows in the photographs suggest that it was taken after 5 p.m. They further point to a clock seen in the picture, whose hour hand appears closer to the 6 o’clock position than to the 2 o’clock position; and to Victor Jorgensen’s account of the circumstances of his own picture; concluding that Mendonsa’s version of events is untenable.

Carl Muscarello

Carl Muscarello is a retired police officer with the New York City Police Department, now living in Plantation, Florida. In 1995, he claimed to be the kissing sailor. He claimed that he was in Times Square on August 14, 1945, and that he kissed numerous women. A distinctive birthmark on his hand enabled his mother to identify him as the subject. Edith Shain initially said she believed Muscarello’s claim to be the sailor and they even dated after their brief reunion. But in 2005, Shain was much less certain, telling the New York Times,

“I can’t say he isn’t. I just can’t say he is. There is no way to tell.”

Muscarello has described his condition on August 14, 1945 as being quite drunk and having no clear memory of his actions in the square, stating that his mother claimed he was the man after seeing the photograph and he came to believe it.

Glenn McDuffie

Glenn McDuffie laid claim in 2007 and was supported by Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson. Gibson’s forensic analysis compared the Eisenstaedt photographs with current-day photographs of McDuffie, analyzing key facial features identical on both sets. She measured his ears, facial bones, hairline, wrist, knuckles, and hand, and compared those to enlargements of Eisenstaedt’s picture.

I could tell just in general that yes, it’s him. But I wanted to be able to tell other people so I replicated the pose.

In the August 14, 2007, issue of AM New York McDuffie said he passed five polygraph tests confirming his claim to be the man. McDuffie, a native of Kannapolis, North Carolina, who had lied about his age so he could enlist at the age of 15, went on after the war to play semi-pro baseball and work for the United States Postal Service.

He says that on that day he was on the subway to Brooklyn to visit his girlfriend, Ardith Bloomfield. He came out of the subway at Times Square, where people were celebrating in the streets. Excited that his brother, who was being held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war, would be released, McDuffie began hollering and jumping up and down. A nurse saw him, and opened her arms to him. In apparent conflict with Eisenstaedt’s recollections of the event, McDuffie said he ran over to her and kissed her for a long time so that Eisenstaedt could take the photograph:

I went over there and kissed her and saw a man running at us…I thought it was a jealous husband or boyfriend coming to poke me in the eyes. I looked up and saw he was taking the picture and I kissed her as long as took for him to take it.

Gibson had also analyzed photographs of other men who have claimed to be the sailor, including Muscarello and Mendonça, reporting that neither man’s facial bones or other features match those of the sailor in the photograph. On August 3, 2008, Glenn McDuffie was recognized for his 81st birthday as the “Kissing Sailor” during the seventh-inning stretch of the Houston Astros and New York Mets game at Minute Maid Park.[citation needed] McDuffie died on March 14, 2014.

Other people

Life‘s October 1980 issue did not include Muscarello or Glenn McDuffie. These claims have been made much more recently.

Mendonça and Friedman (both individually and together), as well as Shain, Muscarello, and McDuffie, were widely interviewed in the succeeding years by Life, PBS, NBC, CBS, and others. The life stories of Mendonça and Friedman, and how they came to be in Times Square that day, as well as the reasons they are considered most likely to be the ones photographed, are the subject of a detailed book on the photo.

Mendonça recognizes Friedman, to the exclusion of any other woman, as the “nurse” he kissed in the photographs (or, to be precise, the woman in the white uniform, as Friedman was a dental assistant—a nurse’s uniform was customary in a dentist’s office to be worn by female assistants and hygienists in that era).

As part of a World War II memorial at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts, a new painting titled Victory Kiss by Jim Laurier of New Hampshire was first unveiled on August 24, 2013, to honor the event captured in the photo. George Mendonça was in attendance for the unveiling.

In popular culture

 

The Unconditional Surrender sculpture in Times Square, New York City

In 2005, John Seward Johnson II displayed a bronze life-size sculpture, Unconditional Surrender, at an August 14, 2005, sixtieth-anniversary reenactment at Times Square of the kiss. His statue was featured in a ceremony that included Carl Muscarello and Edith Shain, holding a copy of the famous photograph, as participants.

Johnson also sculpted a 25-foot-tall (7.6 m) version in plastic and aluminum, which has been displayed in several cities, including San Diego and Sarasota.The 25-foot (7.6 m) version was moved to New York City again on August 12, 2015, for a temporary display.

In the 2009 film Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, two characters jump into a life-size enlargement of the photograph, finding themselves in a monochrome Times Square. One of them cuts in on the sailor for a kiss with the nurse.

In the 2009 film Watchmen, during the opening credits, the Times Square V-J celebration is shown with a costumed heroine, Silhouette, kissing a female nurse as a photographer captures the moment.

In 2009 a furor over the placement of a derivative of the photograph on public land arose in Sarasota, Florida. Television and radio programs concentrated on it, and letters to the editor were printed for months. Letters and articles in the local press continue to debate the central issue of the objections in 2015. The statue was given ten years to stay on the public land by a slim majority of city council members.

In the 2010 film Letters to Juliet, the photograph is featured in a scene where a magazine editor questions a writer about her fact-checking regarding the image.

In the The Simpsons episode “Bart the General“, victory celebrations following a “war” between two groups of children include a boy in a sailor outfit kissing Lisa as a photograph is taken. She then slaps the boy, exclaiming, “Knock it off!”

In 2012, while performing a show for the Marines during the New York City Fleet Week, singer Katy Perry kissed a man on stage, replicating the pose.

In the 2012 film Men in Black III, a time traveling character views The Kiss.

In the 2014 video game Wolfenstein: The New Order, an alternative history version of the V-J Day kiss (V-A Day in the timeline) appears as a Nazi soldier forcing himself on the nurse.

 

 

 

See below for other Iconic Pictures & pictures that changed the world.

Before you go

Operation Inherent Resolve – Crushing Islamic State

isil, isis, Islamic Extremists, Islamic State,

 

Operation Inherent Resolve

operation resolve

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Islamic State are taking a battering and slowly slowly these mad dogs are being brought to their knees and hopefully its only a matter of time before we eradicate  this stain on humanity once and for all and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is rotting in the eternal flames of  hell.

Because Karma has been a witness to his madness and Karma always collects its debts!

Related image
Scum of the earth

 

SOUTHWEST ASIA–(ENEWSPF)–March 14, 2017 — U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

Officials reported details of the latest strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 12 strikes consisting of 20 engagements against ISIS targets:

  • Near Dayr Az Zawr, six strikes destroyed eight wellheads, four pump jacks and three oil tanker trunks and damaged two pump jacks and a wellhead.
  • Near Raqqa, six strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units; destroyed four fighting positions, an ISIS-held building, and a vehicle; and damaged two supply routes.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted eight strikes consisting of 84 engagements against ISIS targets, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:

  • Near Haditha, a strike destroyed three improvised bombs.
  • Near Mosul, five strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units; destroyed 27 fighting positions, three rocket-propelled grenade systems, two vehicle bombs, an artillery system, a mortar system, a heavy machine gun, a road block, a vehicle and a vehicle bomb factory; damaged 12 supply routes; and suppressed five ISIS mortar teams and two ISIS tactical units.
  • Near Tal Afar, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit, destroyed an ISIS-held building and damaged three supply routes.

Part of Operation Inherent Resolve

These strikes were conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to destroy ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The destruction of ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria also further limits the group’s ability to project terror and conduct external operations throughout the region and the rest of the world, task force officials said.

The list above contains all strikes conducted by fighter, attack, bomber, rotary-wing or remotely piloted aircraft; rocket-propelled artillery; and some ground-based tactical artillery when fired on planned targets, officials noted.

Ground-based artillery fired in counterfire or in fire support to maneuver roles is not classified as a strike, they added. A strike, as defined by the coalition, refers to one or more kinetic engagements that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a single or cumulative effect. For example, task force officials explained, a single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIS vehicle is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons against a group of ISIS-held buildings and weapon systems in a compound, having the cumulative effect of making that facility harder or impossible to use. Strike assessments are based on initial reports and may be refined, officials said.

The task force does not report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual munition impact points against a target.

Source: http://defense.gov

Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) is the U.S. military’s operational name for the military intervention against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, in the vernacular, Daesh), including both the campaign in Iraq and the campaign in Syria. Since 21 August 2016, the U.S. Army‘s XVIII Airborne Corps has been responsible for Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR).

History

2014

Unlike their coalition partners, and unlike previous combat operations, no name was initially given to the conflict against ISIS by the U.S. government. The decision to keep the conflict nameless drew considerable media criticism.

The U.S. decided in October 2014 to name its military efforts against ISIS as “Operation Inherent Resolve”; the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) news release announcing the name noted that:

According to CENTCOM officials, the name INHERENT RESOLVE is intended to reflect the unwavering resolve and deep commitment of the U.S. and partner nations in the region and around the globe to eliminate the terrorist group ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, the region and the wider international community. It also symbolizes the willingness and dedication of coalition members to work closely with our friends in the region and apply all available dimensions of national power necessary—diplomatic, informational, military, economic—to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.

 

The Defense Department announced at the end of October 2014 that troops operating in support of Operation Inherent Resolve after 15 June were eligible for the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal. Service areas are: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as troops supporting the operation in the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea east of 25 degrees longitude. The medal is approved retroactively beginning 15 June, the Pentagon said.

By 4 December 2014, three U.S. service members had died from accidents or non-combat injuries.

2015

On 22 October 2015, a U.S. Master Sergeant, Joshua L. Wheeler, was shot dead when he, with about 30 other U.S. special operations soldiers and a peshmerga unit, conducted a prison break near Hawija, in which about 70 hostages were rescued, five ISIS members were captured and “a number” were killed or wounded.

The Kurdistan Regional Government said after the raid that none of the 15 prisoners it was intended to rescue were found.

2016

As of 9 March 2016, nearly 11,000 airstrikes have been launched on ISIS (and occasionally Al-Nusra), killing over 27,000 fighters and striking over 22,000 targets, including 139 tanks, 371 Humvees, and 1,216 pieces of oil infrastructure. Approximately 80% of these airstrikes have been conducted by American forces, with the remaining 20% being launched by other members of the coalition, such as the United Kingdom and Australia. 7,268 strikes hit targets in Iraq, while 3,602 hit targets in Syria.

On 12 June 2016, it was reported that 120 Islamic State leaders, commanders, propagandists, recruiters and other high-value individuals were killed so far this year.

  • Until March 2016, U.S. military members were ineligible for Campaign Medals and other service decorations due to the continuing ambiguous nature of the continuing U.S. involvement in Iraq. However, on 30 March 2016, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter announced the creation of a new medal, named “Inherent Resolve Campaign Medal“.

On 16 June 2016, AV-8B II+ Harriers of the 13th MEU flying off the USS Boxer began airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria the first time the U.S. Navy has used ship-based aircraft from both the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf at the same time during Operation Inherent Resolve  (aircraft from the USS Harry S. Truman began airstrikes on IS targets from the Mediterranean on 3 June).

As of 27 July 2016, U.S. and coalition partners conducted more than 14,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria: Nearly 11,000 of those strikes were from U.S. aircraft and the majority of the strikes (more than 9,000) were in Iraq. Of the 26,374 targets hit, nearly 8,000 were against ISIS fighting positions, while approximately 6,500 hit buildings; ISIS staging areas and oil infrastructure were each hit around 1,600 times.  On 15 December 2016, the UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon said that :

“more than 25,000 Daesh fighters have now been killed,” a number that is half of the United States’ estimate.

When asked about this discrepancy, the UK’s Ministry of Defense said that it stood by his estimate.

Since the first U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets in Iraq on 8 August 2014, over two years, the U.S. military has spent over $8.4 billion fighting ISIS.

2017

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, U.S.-led Coalition airstrikes have killed 7,043 people across Syria, of which: 5,768 dead were ISIL fighters, 304 Al-Nusra Front militants and other rebels, 90 government soldiers and 881 civilians. The air strikes occurred in the period between 22 September 2014 and 23 January 2017.

In March 2017, various media outlets reported that conventional forces from the 11th MEU deployed to Syria to support US-backed forces in liberating Raqqa from ISIS occupation. The deployment marks a new escalation in the U.S. war in Syria.

As of Feb. 28, 2017, the U.S.-led air coalition has conducted 3,271 sorties in 2017, 2,129 of which have resulted in at least one weapon released. In total, the coalition released 7,040 weapons in Iraq and Syria in this same time period in an effort to destroy ISIS.

Assets

Further information: Military intervention against ISIL order of battle

United States Air Force, United States Navy & United States Marine Corps units that are participating in this operations can be found in the Military intervention against ISIL order of battle.

United States Marine Corps

 United States Army

U.S. and coalition forces are training Iraqi forces at four sites: in al-Asad in Anbar province, Erbil in the north, and Taji and Besmayah in the Baghdad area.

Seal of Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve.svg Combined Joint Forces Land Component Command-Iraq

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Visit the website: www.inherentresolve.mil

 

 

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Hillcrest Bar /Saint Patrick’s Day bombing

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The Hillcrest Bar bombing

17th March 1976

The Hillcrest Bar bombing, also known as the “Saint Patrick’s Day bombing”, took place on 17 March 1976 in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. The Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, detonated a car bomb outside a pub crowded with people celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day.

Four Catholic civilians were killed by the blast—including two 13-year-old boys standing outside—and almost 50 people were injured, some severely.

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The Innocent Victims

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17 March 1976


 Patrick Barnard,   (13)

Catholic
Status: Civilian (Civ),

Killed by: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Killed in car bomb explosion, outside Hillcrest Bar, Donaghmore Road, Dungannon, County Tyrone.

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17 March 1976


 Joseph Kelly,  (57)

Catholic
Status: Civilian (Civ),

Killed by: Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF)
Killed in car bomb explosion, outside Hillcrest Bar, Donaghmore Road, Dungannon, County Tyrone

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17 March 1976


 James McCaughey,  

View original post 1,237 more words

Knights Templar – God’s Holy Warriors’

Blog, History, , ,

Knights Templar

Footage has emerged of an intriguing network of caves found through a rabbit hole that many believe were built by the Knights Templar order 700 years ago.

The sanctuary in Shropshire is located under an unassuming set of what appear to be large rabbit holes in a farmer’s field near the town of Shifnal.

Image result for knights templar cave

The caves, some of which have to be accessed on hands and knees, are one metre underground and are carved out of sandstone. They feature several alcoves and a font.

It remains unclear exactly what the caves were used for or when they were built, but Historic England describes them as a “grotto” and states it appears they have recently been used for “black magic rites”

Photographer Michael Scott said: “I traipsed over a field to find it, but if you didn’t know it was there you would just walk right past it. Considering how long it’s been there it’s in amazing condition, it’s like an underground temple.”

“I had to crouch down and once I was in it was completely silent. There were a few spiders in there but that was it. It was raining so the slope down was quite sludgy but inside the cave was bone dry.”

See Telegraph for full story & pictures

Knights Templar

Background & History

knights templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon (Latin: Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici), also known as the Order of Solomon’s Temple (French: Ordre du Temple or Templiers, Arabic: فرسان الهيكل‎‎), the Knights Templar, or simply as Templars, was a Christian military order recognised in 1139 by papal bull Omne Datum Optimum of the Holy See.[4] The order was founded in 1119 and active from about 1129 to 1312.

The order, which was among the wealthiest and most powerful, became a favoured charity throughout Christendom and grew rapidly in membership and power. They were prominent in Christian finance. Templar knights, in their distinctive white mantles with a red cross, were among the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.

Non-combatant members of the order managed a large economic infrastructure throughout Christendom, developing innovative financial techniques that were an early form of banking,  and building fortifications across Europe and the Holy Land.

The Templars were closely tied to the Crusades; when the Holy Land was lost, support for the order faded. Rumours about the Templars’ secret initiation ceremony created distrust, and King Philip IV of France – deeply in debt to the order – took advantage of the situation to gain control over them. In 1307, he had many of the order’s members in France arrested, tortured into giving false confessions, and burned at the stake.

Papa Clemens Quintus.jpg

Pope Clement V disbanded the order in 1312 under pressure from King Philip.

The abrupt reduction in power of a significant group in European society gave rise to speculation, legend, and legacy through the ages. The re-use of their name for later organizations has kept the name “Templar” alive to the modern day.

Knights Templar
Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon
Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici Hierosolymitanis
Seal of Templars.jpg
Active c. 1119–1312
Allegiance The Pope
Type Catholic military order
Role Protection of Christian Pilgrims
Size 15,000–20,000 members at peak, 10% of whom were knights[2][3]
Headquarters Temple Mount, Jerusalem,
Kingdom of Jerusalem
Nickname(s) Order of Solomon’s Temple
Order Of Christ
Patron Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
Motto(s) Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam
(English: Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy Name give glory)
Attire White mantle with a red cross
Mascot(s) Two knights riding a single horse
Engagements The Crusades, including:
Commanders
First Grand Master Hugues de Payns
Last Grand Master Jacques de Mola

History

Rise

After Europeans in the First Crusade recovered Jerusalem in 1099, many Christians made pilgrimages to various sacred sites in the Holy Land. Although the city of Jerusalem was under relatively secure Christian control, the rest of Outremer was not. Bandits and marauding highwaymen preyed upon pilgrims, who were routinely slaughtered, sometimes by the hundreds, as they attempted to make the journey from the coastline at Jaffa into the interior of the Holy Land.

In 1119, the French knight Hugues de Payens approached King Baldwin II of Jerusalem and Warmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem, and proposed creating a monastic order for the protection of these pilgrims. King Baldwin and Patriarch Warmund agreed to the request, probably at the Council of Nablus in January 1120, and the king granted the Templars a headquarters in a wing of the royal palace on the Temple Mount in the captured Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Temple Mount had a mystique because it was above what was believed to be the ruins of the Temple of Solomon. The Crusaders therefore referred to the Al-Aqsa Mosque as Solomon’s Temple, and from this location the new order took the name of Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, or “Templar” knights. The order, with about nine knights including Godfrey de Saint-Omer and André de Montbard, had few financial resources and relied on donations to survive.

Their emblem was of two knights riding on a single horse, emphasising the order’s poverty.

The first headquarters of the Knights Templar, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Crusaders called it the Temple of Solomon and from this location derived their name of Templar.

The impoverished status of the Templars did not last long. They had a powerful advocate in Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a leading Church figure, the French abbot primarily responsible for the founding of the Cistercian Order of monks and a nephew of André de Montbard, one of the founding knights. Bernard put his weight behind them and wrote persuasively on their behalf in the letter ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’,  and in 1129, at the Council of Troyes, he led a group of leading churchmen to officially approve and endorse the order on behalf of the church. With this formal blessing, the Templars became a favoured charity throughout Christendom, receiving money, land, businesses, and noble-born sons from families who were eager to help with the fight in the Holy Land. Another major benefit came in 1139, when Pope Innocent II‘s papal bull Omne Datum Optimum exempted the order from obedience to local laws.

This ruling meant that the Templars could pass freely through all borders, were not required to pay any taxes, and were exempt from all authority except that of the pope.

With its clear mission and ample resources, the order grew rapidly. Templars were often the advance shock troops in key battles of the Crusades, as the heavily armoured knights on their warhorses would set out to charge at the enemy, ahead of the main army bodies, in an attempt to break opposition lines. One of their most famous victories was in 1177 during the Battle of Montgisard, where some 500 Templar knights helped several thousand infantry to defeat Saladin‘s army of more than 26,000 soldiers.

A Templar Knight is truly a fearless knight, and secure on every side, for his soul is protected by the armour of faith, just as his body is protected by the armour of steel. He is thus doubly armed, and need fear neither demons nor men.”

Bernard de Clairvaux, c. 1135,


De Laude Novae Militae—In Praise of the New Knighthood

Although the primary mission of the order was military, relatively few members were combatants. The others acted in support positions to assist the knights and to manage the financial infrastructure. The Templar Order, though its members were sworn to individual poverty, was given control of wealth beyond direct donations. A nobleman who was interested in participating in the Crusades might place all his assets under Templar management while he was away. Accumulating wealth in this manner throughout Christendom and the Outremer, the order in 1150 began generating letters of credit for pilgrims journeying to the Holy Land: pilgrims deposited their valuables with a local Templar preceptory before embarking, received a document indicating the value of their deposit, then used that document upon arrival in the Holy Land to retrieve their funds in an amount of treasure of equal value.

This innovative arrangement was an early form of banking and may have been the first formal system to support the use of cheques; it improved the safety of pilgrims by making them less attractive targets for thieves, and also contributed to the Templar coffers.

Based on this mix of donations and business dealing, the Templars established financial networks across the whole of Christendom. They acquired large tracts of land, both in Europe and the Middle East; they bought and managed farms and vineyards; they built massive stone cathedrals and castles; they were involved in manufacturing, import and export; they had their own fleet of ships; and at one point they even owned the entire island of Cyprus. The Order of the Knights Templar arguably qualifies as the world’s first multinational corporation.

Decline

 

Battle of Hattin in 1187, the turning point in the Crusades

In the mid-12th century, the tide began to turn in the Crusades. The Muslim world had become more united under effective leaders such as Saladin, and dissension arose amongst Christian factions in, and concerning, the Holy Land. The Knights Templar were occasionally at odds with the two other Christian military orders, the Knights Hospitaller and the Teutonic Knights, and decades of internecine feuds weakened Christian positions, both politically and militarily. After the Templars were involved in several unsuccessful campaigns, including the pivotal Battle of Hattin, Jerusalem was recaptured by Muslim forces under Saladin in 1187.

The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II reclaimed the city for Christians in the Sixth Crusade of 1229, without Templar aid, but only held it briefly for a little more than a decade. In 1244, the Ayyubids, together with Khwarezmi mercenaries recaptured Jerusalem, and the city did not return to Western control until 1917 when the British captured it from the Ottoman Empire in World War I.

The Templars were forced to relocate their headquarters to other cities in the north, such as the seaport of Acre, which they held for the next century. It was lost in 1291, followed by their last mainland strongholds, Tortosa (Tartus in what is now Syria) and Atlit in present-day Israel. Their headquarters then moved to Limassol on the island of Cyprus,  and they also attempted to maintain a garrison on tiny Arwad Island, just off the coast from Tortosa. In 1300, there was some attempt to engage in coordinated military efforts with the Mongols via a new invasion force at Arwad.

In 1302 or 1303, however, the Templars lost the island to the Egyptian Mamluks in the Siege of Arwad. With the island gone, the Crusaders lost their last foothold in the Holy Land.

With the order’s military mission now less important, support for the organization began to dwindle. The situation was complex, however, since during the two hundred years of their existence, the Templars had become a part of daily life throughout Christendom.

The organization’s Templar Houses, hundreds of which were dotted throughout Europe and the Near East, gave them a widespread presence at the local level.[3] The Templars still managed many businesses, and many Europeans had daily contact with the Templar network, such as by working at a Templar farm or vineyard, or using the order as a bank in which to store personal valuables. The order was still not subject to local government, making it everywhere a “state within a state”—its standing army, though it no longer had a well-defined mission, could pass freely through all borders.

This situation heightened tensions with some European nobility, especially as the Templars were indicating an interest in founding their own monastic state, just as the Teutonic Knights had done in Prussia and the Knights Hospitaller were doing in Rhodes.

Arrests, charges and dissolution

 

In 1305, the new Pope Clement V, based in Avignon, France, sent letters to both the Templar Grand Master Jacques de Molay and the Hospitaller Grand Master Fulk de Villaret to discuss the possibility of merging the two orders. Neither was amenable to the idea, but Pope Clement persisted, and in 1306 he invited both Grand Masters to France to discuss the matter. De Molay arrived first in early 1307, but de Villaret was delayed for several months.

While waiting, De Molay and Clement discussed criminal charges that had been made two years earlier by an ousted Templar and were being discussed by King Philip IV of France and his ministers. It was generally agreed that the charges were false, but Clement sent the king a written request for assistance in the investigation. According to some historians, King Philip, who was already deeply in debt to the Templars from his war with the English, decided to seize upon the rumors for his own purposes. He began pressuring the church to take action against the order, as a way of freeing himself from his debts.

 

Convent of Christ Castle in Tomar, Portugal. Built in 1160 as a stronghold for the Knights Templar, it became the headquarters of the renamed Order of Christ.

In 1983, it was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

At dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307 (a date sometimes linked with the origin of the Friday the 13th superstition) King Philip IV ordered de Molay and scores of other French Templars to be simultaneously arrested. The arrest warrant started with the phrase: “Dieu n’est pas content, nous avons des ennemis de la foi dans le Royaume”

[“God is not pleased. We have enemies of the faith in the kingdom”].

Claims were made that during Templar admissions ceremonies, recruits were forced to spit on the Cross, deny Christ, and engage in indecent kissing; brethren were also accused of worshiping idols, and the order was said to have encouraged homosexual practices. The Templars were charged with numerous other offences such as financial corruption, fraud, and secrecy.

Many of the accused confessed to these charges under torture, and these confessions, even though obtained under duress, caused a scandal in Paris. The prisoners were coerced to confess that they had spat on the Cross:

“Moi, Raymond de La Fère, 21 ans, reconnais que [j’ai] craché trois fois sur la Croix, mais de bouche et pas de cœur” (free translation: “I, Raymond de La Fère, 21 years old, admit that I have spat three times on the Cross, but only from my mouth and not from my heart”).

The Templars were accused of idolatry and were suspected of worshipping either a figure known as Baphomet or a mummified severed head they recovered, amongst other artifacts, at their original headquarters on the Temple Mount that many scholars theorize might have been that of John the Baptist, among other things.

Relenting to Phillip’s demands, Pope Clement then issued the papal bull Pastoralis Praeeminentiae on 22 November 1307, which instructed all Christian monarchs in Europe to arrest all Templars and seize their assets. Pope Clement called for papal hearings to determine the Templars’ guilt or innocence, and once freed of the Inquisitors‘ torture, many Templars recanted their confessions. Some had sufficient legal experience to defend themselves in the trials, but in 1310, having appointed the archbishop of Sens, Philippe de Marigny, to lead the investigation, Philip blocked this attempt, using the previously forced confessions to have dozens of Templars burned at the stake in Paris.

With Philip threatening military action unless the pope complied with his wishes, Pope Clement finally agreed to disband the order, citing the public scandal that had been generated by the confessions. At the Council of Vienne in 1312, he issued a series of papal bulls, including Vox in excelso, which officially dissolved the order, and Ad providam, which turned over most Templar assets to the Hospitallers.

 

Templars being burned at the stake.

As for the leaders of the order, the elderly Grand Master Jacques de Molay, who had confessed under torture, retracted his confession. Geoffroi de Charney, Preceptor of Normandy, also retracted his confession and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to burn alive at the stake in Paris on 18 March 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer.

According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. His actual words were recorded on the parchment as follows : “Dieu sait qui a tort et a péché. Il va bientot arriver malheur à ceux qui nous ont condamnés à mort” (free translation :

“God knows who is wrong and has sinned. Soon a calamity will occur to those who have condemned us to death”).

Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year.

With the last of the order’s leaders gone, the remaining Templars around Europe were either arrested and tried under the Papal investigation (with virtually none convicted), absorbed into other military orders such as the Knights Hospitaller, or pensioned off and allowed to live out their days peacefully. By papal decree, the property of the Templars was transferred to the Knights Hospitaller, which also absorbed many of the Templars’ members.

In effect, the dissolution of the Templars could be seen as the merger of the two rival orders. Templar organizations simply changed their name, from Knights Templar to Order of Christ and also a parallel Supreme Order of Christ of the Holy See in which both are considered the successors.

Chinon Parchment

Image result for chinon parchment

 

See : Chinon Parchment

In September 2001, a document known as the “Chinon Parchment” dated 17–20 August 1308 was discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives by Barbara Frale, apparently after having been filed in the wrong place in 1628. It is a record of the trial of the Templars and shows that Clement absolved the Templars of all heresies in 1308 before formally disbanding the order in 1312, as did another Chinon Parchment dated 20 August 1308 addressed to Philip IV of France, also mentioning that all Templars that had confessed to heresy were “restored to the Sacraments and to the unity of the Church”.

This other Chinon Parchment has been well-known to historians, having been published by Étienne Baluze in 1693 and by Pierre Dupuy in 1751.

The current position of the Roman Catholic Church is that the medieval persecution of the Knights Templar was unjust, that nothing was inherently wrong with the order or its rule, and that Pope Clement was pressed into his actions by the magnitude of the public scandal and by the dominating influence of King Philip IV, who was Clement’s relative.

Organization

 

Templar chapel from the 12th century in Metz, France.

Once part of the Templar commandery of Metz, the oldest Templar institution of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Templars were organized as a monastic order similar to Bernard’s Cistercian Order, which was considered the first effective international organization in Europe. The organizational structure had a strong chain of authority. Each country with a major Templar presence (France, Poitou, Anjou, Jerusalem, England, Aragon, Portugal, Italy, Tripoli, Antioch, Hungary, and Croatia) had a Master of the Order for the Templars in that region.

All of them were subject to the Grand Master, appointed for life, who oversaw both the order’s military efforts in the East and their financial holdings in the West. The Grand Master exercised his authority via the visitors-general of the order, who were knights specially appointed by the Grand Master and convent of Jerusalem to visit the different provinces, correct malpractices, introduce new regulations, and resolve important disputes. The visitors-general had the power to remove knights from office and to suspend the Master of the province concerned.

No precise numbers exist, but it is estimated that at the order’s peak there were between 15,000 and 20,000 Templars, of whom about a tenth were actual knights.

Ranks within the order

Three main ranks

There was a threefold division of the ranks of the Templars: the noble knights, the non-noble sergeants, and the chaplains. The Templars did not perform knighting ceremonies, so any knight wishing to become a Knight Templar had to be a knight already. They were the most visible branch of the order, and wore the famous white mantles to symbolise their purity and chastity.

They were equipped as heavy cavalry, with three or four horses and one or two squires. Squires were generally not members of the order but were instead outsiders who were hired for a set period of time. Beneath the knights in the order and drawn from non-noble families were the sergeants. They brought vital skills and trades such as blacksmithing and building, and administered many of the order’s European properties. In the Crusader States, they fought alongside the knights as light cavalry with a single horse.

Several of the order’s most senior positions were reserved for sergeants, including the post of Commander of the Vault of Acre, who was the de facto Admiral of the Templar fleet. The sergeants wore black or brown. From 1139, chaplains constituted a third Templar class. They were ordained priests who cared for the Templars’ spiritual needs.

All three classes of brother wore the order’s red cross.

Grand Masters

Templar building at Saint Martin des Champs, France

Starting with founder Hugues de Payens in 1118–1119, the order’s highest office was that of Grand Master, a position which was held for life, though considering the martial nature of the order, this could mean a very short tenure. All but two of the Grand Masters died in office, and several died during military campaigns. For example, during the Siege of Ascalon in 1153, Grand Master Bernard de Tremelay led a group of 40 Templars through a breach in the city walls. When the rest of the Crusader army did not follow, the Templars, including their Grand Master, were surrounded and beheaded.

Coat of arms of Gerard de Ridefort

Grand Master Gérard de Ridefort was beheaded by Saladin in 1189 at the Siege of Acre.

The Grand Master oversaw all of the operations of the order, including both the military operations in the Holy Land and Eastern Europe and the Templars’ financial and business dealings in Western Europe. Some Grand Masters also served as battlefield commanders, though this was not always wise: several blunders in de Ridefort’s combat leadership contributed to the devastating defeat at the Battle of Hattin. The last Grand Master was Jacques de Molay, burned at the stake in Paris in 1314 by order of King Philip IV.

Behaviour, clothing and beards

 

Representation of a Knight Templar

Bernard de Clairvaux and founder Hugues de Payens devised the specific code of behaviour for the Templar Order, known to modern historians as the Latin Rule. Its 72 clauses defined the ideal behaviour for the Knights, such as the types of garments they were to wear and how many horses they could have. Knights were to take their meals in silence, eat meat no more than three times per week, and not have physical contact of any kind with women, even members of their own family.

A Master of the Order was assigned:

“4 horses, and one chaplain-brother and one clerk with three horses, and one sergeant brother with two horses, and one gentleman valet to carry his shield and lance, with one horse.”

As the order grew, more guidelines were added, and the original list of 72 clauses was expanded to several hundred in its final form.

The knights wore a white surcoat with a red cross and a white mantle also with a red cross; the sergeants wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and a black or brown mantle. The white mantle was assigned to the Templars at the Council of Troyes in 1129, and the cross was most probably added to their robes at the launch of the Second Crusade in 1147, when Pope Eugenius III, King Louis VII of France, and many other notables attended a meeting of the French Templars at their headquarters near Paris.

According to their Rule, the knights were to wear the white mantle at all times, even being forbidden to eat or drink unless they were wearing it.

 

One of the many reported flags of the Knights Templar

The red cross that the Templars wore on their robes was a symbol of martyrdom, and to die in combat was considered a great honour that assured a place in heaven. There was a cardinal rule that the warriors of the order should never surrender unless the Templar flag had fallen, and even then they were first to try to regroup with another of the Christian orders, such as that of the Hospitallers. Only after all flags had fallen were they allowed to leave the battlefield.

This uncompromising principle, along with their reputation for courage, excellent training, and heavy armament, made the Templars one of the most feared combat forces in medieval times.

Although not prescribed by the Templar Rule, it later became customary for members of the order to wear long and prominent beards. In about 1240, Alberic of Trois-Fontaines described the Templars as an “order of bearded brethren”; while during the interrogations by the papal commissioners in Paris in 1310–11, out of nearly 230 knights and brothers questioned, 76 are described as wearing a beard, in some cases specified as being “in the style of the Templars”, and 133 are said to have shaved off their beards, either in renunciation of the order or because they had hoped to escape detection.

Initiation, known as Reception (receptio) into the order, was a profound commitment and involved a solemn ceremony. Outsiders were discouraged from attending the ceremony, which aroused the suspicions of medieval inquisitors during the later trials. New members had to willingly sign over all of their wealth and goods to the order and take vows of poverty, chastity, piety, and obedience.[

Most brothers joined for life, although some were allowed to join for a set period. Sometimes a married man was allowed to join if he had his wife’s permission, but he was not allowed to wear the white mantle.

Legacy

See also: List of places associated with the Knights Templar

Temple Church, London.

As the chapel of the New Temple in London, it was the location for Templar initiation ceremonies. In modern times it is the parish church of the Middle and Inner Temples, two of the Inns of Court, and a popular tourist attraction.

With their military mission and extensive financial resources, the Knights Templar funded a large number of building projects around Europe and the Holy Land. Many of these structures are still standing. Many sites also maintain the name “Temple” because of centuries-old association with the Templars.

For example, some of the Templars’ lands in London were later rented to lawyers, which led to the names of the Temple Bar gateway and the Temple Underground station. Two of the four Inns of Court which may call members to act as barristers are the Inner Temple and Middle Temple.

Distinctive architectural elements of Templar buildings include the use of the image of “two knights on a single horse”, representing the Knights’ poverty, and round buildings designed to resemble the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Modern organizations

The story of the persecution and sudden dissolution of the secretive yet powerful medieval Templars has drawn many other groups to use alleged connections with the Templars as a way of enhancing their own image and mystery. There is no clear historical connection between the Knights Templar, which were dismantled in the Rolls of the Catholic Church in 1309 with the martyrdom of Jacques de Molay, and any of the modern organizations, the earliest emerged publicly in the 18th century.

Freemasonry

Since at least the 18th century,  Freemasonry has incorporated the symbols and rituals of several medieval military orders in a number of Masonic bodies, most notably, in the “Red Cross of Constantine,” Inspired by the Military Constantinian Order, the “Order of Malta,” Inspired by the Knights Hospitaller, and the “Order of the Temple“, Inspired by the Knights Templar, the latter two featuring prominently in the York Rite. One theory on the origins of Freemasonry claims direct descent from the historical Knights Templar through its final fourteenth-century members, who took refuge in Scotland and aided Robert the Bruce in his victory at Bannockburn.

This theory is usually deprecated on grounds of lack of evidence, by both Masonic authorities and historians.

Modern popular culture

The Knights Templar have become associated with legends concerning secrets and mysteries handed down to the select from ancient times. Rumors circulated even during the time of the Templars themselves. Masonic writers added their own speculations in the 18th century, and further fictional embellishments have been added in popular novels such as Ivanhoe, Foucault’s Pendulum, and The Da Vinci Code, modern movies such as National Treasure and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, as well as video games such as Broken Sword and Assassin’s Creed.

Beginning in the 1960s, there have been speculative popular publications surrounding the order’s early occupation of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and speculation about what relics the Templars may have found there, such as the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant, or the historical accusation of idol worship (Baphomet) transformed into a context of “witchcraft”.

The association of the Holy Grail with the Templars has precedents even in 12th century fiction; Wolfram von Eschenbach‘s Parzival calls the knights guarding the Grail Kingdom templeisen, apparently a conscious fictionalisation of the templarii.

.See: List of Knights Templar sites

See The Crusades