Less than four months after Hitler's death, a great future US president declared in great secrecy love for the Führer

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A diary kept by President John F Kennedy as a young man travelling in Europe, revealing his fascination with Adolf Hitler, is up for auction.

Kennedy, then 28, predicted "Hitler will emerge from the hatred that surrounds him now as one of the most significant figures who ever lived".

"He had in him the stuff of which legends are made," he continued.
Kennedy wrote the entry in the summer of 1945 after touring the German dictator's Bavarian mountain retreat.
It is thought by historians to be the only diary ever kept by the 35th US president.

RR AUCTION

The original copy will be auctioned for the first time on 26 April in Boston by longtime owner Deirdre Henderson, who worked as a research assistant for Kennedy while he was a US senator with White House ambitions.

He wrote that Hitler "had boundless ambition for his country which rendered him a menace to the peace of the world, but he had a mystery about him in the way he lived and in the manner of his death that will live and grow after him".

The 61-page diary was kept by Kennedy around four months after Hitler committed suicide.


At the time, the young American was touring Europe as a newspaper reporter after finishing his military service aboard a ship in the Pacific Ocean.

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Nearly two decades later Kennedy would address crowds in West Berlin as US president.

He gave Ms Henderson the diary in order to inform her of his views on foreign policy and national security, she said.

In a description of the auction, she wrote: "When JFK said that Hitler 'had in him the stuff of which legends are made', he was speaking to the mystery surrounding him, not the evil he demonstrated to the world."

"Nowhere in this diary, or in any of his writings, is there any indication of sympathy for Nazi crimes or cause," she continued.
The diary also contains JFK's thoughts about the British election and Winston Churchill, who Ms Henderson called his "idol".

The winning bid is expected to be around $200,000 (£160,000).

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by BBC . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Secret room of the famous Rushmore

After its completion 75 years ago, the colossal presidential sculpture carved into Mount Rushmore quickly became an American icon. However, few know that hidden behind the hairline of Abraham Lincoln is a doorway to an unfinished chamber originally intended to hold some of America’s most treasured documents.

On Halloween in 1941, the 14-year effort to carve the enormous profiles of four American presidents—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt—into the southeastern face of Mount Rushmore was finally completed. However, one little-known, but critical, element of Danish-American sculptor Gutzon Borglum’s “Shrine of Democracy Sculpture” was left unfinished and remains concealed from view behind Lincoln’s mighty brow.

Mount Rushmore as carving began with conceptual drawing of Borglum’s idea for a the never-built entablature inserted. (Credit: NPS, Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

Carved into the solid granite wall of a small canyon running right behind the presidential lineup is an 18-foot-tall doorway that resembles the entrance to an ancient tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh. While Nicolas Cage’s character in the movie “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” discovered the entrance to a legendary city of gold inside a cave on Mount Rushmore, no such riches can be found in the actual chamber chiseled into the mountain. Anyone crossing the threshold would discover an empty room approximately 75 feet in length with a 35-foot-tall ceiling. Holes jack-hammered into the walls to hold dynamite for blasting lend a honeycomb effect. Red numbers, perhaps painted by Borglum himself, give instructions for the removal of rocks.

Gutzon Borglum (Credit: Library of Congress)

Borglum had intended for this incomplete chamber to be, in essence, his artist’s statement explaining the meaning of his sculpture—not for present generations but for future civilizations, and even interplanetary visitors, thousands of years in the future. “You might as well drop a letter into the world’s postal service without an address or signature, as to send that carved mountain into history without identification,” the sculptor wrote. While the four faces carved on Mount Rushmore are instantly recognizable even to school kids today, Borglum thought they might one day become as mysterious as Stonehenge. “Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor,” he lamented. “Civilizations are ghouls.”

The sculptor’s early plans for Mount Rushmore included next to Washington’s head a massive 80-by-120-foot inscription in the shape of the Louisiana Purchase that would list nine of the most important events in the history of the United States between 1776 and 1906. However, even with the most astronomical of point sizes, the text would not have been legible at great distances, and ultimately logistics required that portion of the mountain to be used for Lincoln’s head. Borglum abandoned the inscription and instead drew up plans to build a repository deep within the mountain that would hold some of America’s most treasured artifacts and documents, such as the Declaration of Independence.

Plans for the Hall of Records. (Credit: Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

The sculptor envisioned a grand, 800-foot-long staircase ascending Mount Rushmore that would lead to a glorious chamber called the “Hall of Records.” “Into this room the records of what our people aspired to and what they accomplished should be collected,” Borglum wrote, “and on the walls of this room should be cut the literal record of conception of our republic; its successful creation; the record of its westward movement to the Pacific; its presidents; how the Memorial was built, and frankly, why.”

Visitors to the Hall of Records would enter through great glass doors over which would be perched a bronze eagle with a 38-foot wingspan and the inscription “America’s Onward March.” A cross pointing to the North Star would be mounted upon the vaulted ceiling, and friezes on the wall would depict “the adventure of humanity discovering and occupying the West World.” An inscription written by John Edward Bradley, who won a national contest sponsored by the Hearst newspapers, would detail the history of the country from its founding through the construction of the Panama Canal. Bronze and glass cabinets in the recesses of the 80-by-100-foot chamber would hold documents such as the U.S. Constitution. There would be busts of more than 20 prominent Americans, ranging from Benjamin Franklin and John Hancock to Alexander Graham Bell and the Wright Brothers.

Workers in the early stages of constructing the Hall of Records. (Credit: Charles D’Emery photo, courtesy of NPS, Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

In July 1938, workers began to cut into the rock on the north wall of a small canyon concealed by the presidential faces to build Borglum’s American shrine. However, a year into the construction, the federal government, which covered nearly all the cost of constructing the monument, tightened the pursestrings and ordered Borglum to stop work on the Hall of Records and focus his full efforts on completing the presidential profiles.

Seven months after the 73-year-old sculptor died in March 1941, Borglum’s son Lincoln led the effort to finish the carving of the four presidents. The Mount Rushmore National Monument was deemed to be complete, although Borglum’s ultimate plan—and the Hall of Records—remained unfinished.

Mount Rushmore under construction. (Credit: NPS, Mount Rushmore National Memorial)

Borglum’s hopes for the Hall of Records were at least partially fulfilled on August 9, 1998, when four generations of his family gathered in the incomplete chamber as 16 porcelain enamel panels inscribed with the words of documents such as the Declaration of Independence, biographies of the sculptor and his presidential subjects and histories of the memorial’s construction and the United States were placed inside a teakwood box and titanium vault that was lowered into the ground and covered by a 1,200-pound black granite capstone inscribed with a quote from Borglum delivered at the 1930 dedication of the carving of Washington. “It’s the end of the creation of Mount Rushmore as my father saw it,” said Borglum’s daughter, Mary Ellis.

It’s one part of Mount Rushmore, however, that few people can see today. Due to safety and security concerns, visitors are prohibited from scaling the mountain to view the Hall of Records.


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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by History . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Researchers were able to find out the secret of a papyrus 1,800 years old What is the connection to the Bible?

An ancient papyrus written in Hebrew, 1,800 years ago, was brought back to life thanks to modern technology.

In 1970, Israeli archaeologists have conducted research in a synagogue in the vicinity of the village En-Gedi, on the west coast of the Dead Sea. Written on parchment made from animal skin, the manuscript survived on a boat when a fire destroyed the village around 600 AD Archaeologists have discovered over more than a millennium later. Papyrus of En Gedi, was burned pretty at first, I did the researchers to believe that it was originally a piece of coal.

Inquisitive scholars have wondered what is written on papyrus, but its opening by the classical method would destroy the rural carbonized papyri. In 1970 there was no type of technology which may examine the manuscript without destroying it. So, En-Gedi papyrus from which measurements of carbon-14 dated it as Century III or IV d.Hr, remained untouched, its contents remain a secret.

Decades later, upgrading technology offered researchers a chance to look at some parts of papyrus. Israeli researchers have heard of the existence of a computer program called ,, Volume Cartography '' conducted by researcher at the University of Kentucky, W. Brent Seales. Through the program, the papyrus could be conducted virtually ,, '' for researchers to be able to decode.

Skeptical, Pnina Shor, project manager Dead Sea, called papyrus to be scanned by micro-CT scanner, which is generally used for cancer patients. The image was sent from Israel to Kentucky for examination. Without noticing the original artifact, Seales and his team of researchers have processed image to flatten the manuscript.

After this process, all the lyrics on the five învelituri text could be read ,, Discovery En-Gedi text amazed us, '' said Shor of a teleconference.

,, I was amazed by the image quality since the text was unreadable, '' added Michael Segal, professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.


What researchers have discovered is En-Gedi first two chapters of Leviticus, a passage from the Bible which ironically refers to the burning of offerings. Because vowels were not developed until the ninth century, the text consists only of consonants. Experts say that writing is remarkable because it is identical to the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible version.



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Source: History