The 1939 German ultimatum to Lithuania was an oral ultimatum which Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany, presented to Juozas Urbšys, Foreign Minister of Lithuania on 20 March 1939. The Germans demanded that Lithuania give up the Klaipėda Region (also known as the Memel Territory) which had been detached from Germany after World War I, or the Wehrmacht would invade Lithuania. The Lithuanians had been expecting the demand after years of rising tension between Lithuania and Germany, increasing pro-Nazi propaganda in the region, and continued German expansion. It was issued just five days after the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. The 1924 Klaipėda Convention had guaranteed the protection of the status quo in the region, but the four signatories to that convention did not offer any material assistance. The United Kingdom and France followed a policy of appeasement, while Italy and Japan openly supported Germany, and Lithuania accepted the ultimatum on 22 March 1939. It proved to be the last territorial acquisition for Germany before World War II, producing a major downturn in Lithuania's economy and escalating pre-war tensions for Europe as a whole.

Compulsory vaccinations for children are "necessary in a democratic society", the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said in a ruling on Thursday.

It came in a case involving several families from the Czech Republic whose children had been refused admission to school because they had not been fully vaccinated against a panel of nine diseases including poliomyelitis, hepatitis B, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, whooping cough and pneumococcal infections.

Nicolas Hervieu, a legal expert specialising in ECHR matters, said the ruling "reinforces the possibility of compulsory vaccination" for COVID-19.

Sixteen of the 17 judges rejected the families' argument that the compulsory vaccination law went against their right to respect for private life.

Extreme temperature contrast across North America right now.

Alaska shivering with brutal early winter cold Meanwhile California sets daily heat records

A Republican Senate candidate in Ohio is doubling down on a controversial campaign ad, insisting voters need to be aware of an important fact: that the frontrunner in the primary is Jewish.

Mark Pukita, an IT entrepreneur in the crowded GOP race, during a Thursday night candidate forum defended a campaign ad that questioned the faith of opponent Josh Mandel.

A moderator at the debate, held by the Ohio Press Network at North Columbus Baptist Church, asked for Pukita to respond to claims that he is “antisemitic and intentionally divisive and inflammatory.”


"In terms of antisemitism, all I did in an ad was pointed out that Josh is going around saying he's got the Bible in one hand and the constitution in the other. But he's Jewish,” Pukita said. “Everybody should know that though, right?"

What if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded? In 2005 a team built a full-size replica of the Parliament building which they destroyed with 1,000kg of gunpowder (the plotters had likely stored around 2,500kg). They concluded no one within 100m of the blast could have survived

The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was a failed assassination attempt against King James I by a group of provincial English Catholics led by Robert Catesby who sought to restore the Catholic monarchy from the Church of England after decades of intolerance against Catholics.

The plan was to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November 1605,[a] as the prelude to a popular revolt in the Midlands during which James's nine-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was to be installed as the Catholic head of state. Catesby may have embarked on the scheme after hopes of securing greater religious tolerance under King James had faded, leaving many English Catholics disappointed. His fellow plotters were John and Christopher Wright, Robert and Thomas Wintour, Thomas Percy, Guy Fawkes, Robert Keyes, Thomas Bates, John Grant, Ambrose Rookwood, Sir Everard Digby and Francis Tresham. Fawkes, who had 10 years of military experience fighting in the Spanish Netherlands in the failed suppression of the Dutch Revolt, was given charge of the explosives.

Jacobean 9/11 Would have prompted merciless anti-Catholic pogroms; consolidated absolutist royalism in Britain; aborted stillborn the possibility of 1642, 1688, 1776 ... think of that when you see someone wearing one of those stupid Guy Fawkes masks as a badge of "resistance"

An Oklahoma nurse who claimed that COVID-19 vaccine kills people died of the virus on Oct. 19.

Steve Shurden, 58, had battled COVID-19 for three weeks before dying of complications in October. Despite his death, his wife Teresa said she wasn’t regretful that her husband chose to remain unvaccinated. -bolding mine-

Shurden was first admitted to a hospital with COVID-19 on Sept. 28. His condition appeared to improve in early October before it rapidly deteriorated. He was briefly taken off the ventilator but later died of COVID-19 complications after he experienced respiratory distress, according to The Daily Mail.

Before he tested positive for COVID-19, Shurden had purchased a new touring RV, with the aim of traveling around and protesting “healthcare genocide,” the report said.