The Japanese Soldiers Who Wouldn’t Surrender

Emperor Hirohito’s announcement of Japan’s surrender at the end of the Second Word War came as a blessed relief to millions of Japanese who had suffered during the long hostilities, but not everybody was prepared to lay down their arms.

The Island Town of Sviyazhsk

When Ivan the Terrible, the Grand Prince of Moscow and the first Tsar of Russia, ascended the throne in the middle of the 16th century, he decided to put an end to the Khanate of Kazan, a medieval Bulgarian-Tatar Turkic state occupying the territory of former Volga Bulgaria, and ruled by the descendants of Genghis Khan.

Dutch Prisons Become Welcoming Homes For Refugees

With crime declining in the Netherlands, the country is looking at new ways to fill its prisons. The government has let Belgium and Norway put prisoners in empty cells and now, amid the huge flow of migrants into Europe, several Dutch prisons have been temporarily pressed into service as asylum-seeker centers.