There were a lot of dark days and many terrible things that happened during WWII. One of them is the Aktion T4 program, a memo signed in October 1939, which granted permission to physicians to conduct euthanasia on people who have incurable or terminal diseases.

Earlier, in May 1939, Hitler had received a request from the parents of Gerhard Kretschmar, who was born blind and missing limbs. The Kretschmars wanted to kill their child. Hitler authorized Brandt to have Gerhard killed. Records show Gerhard died on July 15 of “heart weakness.” He was five months old.

Historians look at the murder of Gerhard Kretshmar as the beginning of Aktion T4, the Nazi “euthanasia” program. From January 1940 until the end of 1941, when Aktion T4 officially ended, 70,000 people with disabilities were murdered at six sites: Brandenburg, Bernburg, Grafeneck, Hadamar, Hartheim, and Pirna-Sonnenstein.

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Taking a vacation from work, school, or whatever occupies your time the most, would help you rest and feel renewed and refreshed after. There are several ways to take a vacation but for now, let's take a look at these seven vacation words to get away from it all.

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Childbirth is one of the most painful experiences women could have. But more painful than that is when normal delivery procedure fails and it then becomes a C-section. Though there are many aspects to a C-section than we might realize, nobody really talks about it as much. But these women want that to change and to break the stigma on having C-sections.

Despite how common the procedure has become, C-sections are rarely portrayed on TV, and little has been done to normalize the conversation around them. Add to that common misconceptions about C-section—that it’s “the easy way out” or a vanity-driven choice—and a dip in self-esteem that can accompany the tell-tale scarring, and women may face a physical and mental recovery period that takes months, or even years.

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We learned in grade school that onomatopoeia is the formation of words based on the sounds with which they are associated. For example, the clucking of a chicken or the banging on the door. There are many words formed in this way. However, there are some that we might be unaware were onomatopoeia. Check out some of these uncommon onomatopoeia at Merriam-Webster.

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Scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine have found a molecular defect present in almost all Parkinson's patients which, when targeted and addressed, may help identify people who are vulnerable to the disease and prevent the disease's progression.

“We’ve identified a molecular marker that could allow doctors to diagnose Parkinson’s accurately, early and in a clinically practical way,” said Xinnan Wang, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurosurgery. “This marker could be used to assess drug candidates’ capacity to counter the defect and stall the disease’s progression.”

The scientists also identified a compound that appears to reverse the defect in cells taken from Parkinson’s patients. In animal models of the disease, the compound prevented the death of the neurons whose loss underlies the disease.

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Here's an honest opinion from Matt Miller of Esquire on Todd Phillips' Joker: it's in desperate need of a hero aka Batman.

I haven't seen the film myself but if the review gives a more or less accurate depiction of the story, then there are two things: one, it has done an excellent portrayal of the birth and inner workings of a villain; and two, it has successfully produced the affect it intended on the audience.

However, there is still something to be said about a sequel. Miller talks about not having closure by the end of the film. Due to the nihilistic perspective of the story, seeing that it's from the point of view of the famous Batman villain, it doesn't show a "happy ending".

And sure, it might just be setting up an origin story for Batman. Whether or not it will happen is anyone's guess. But showing this caricature of Joker could probably help give more substance to the character and to the circumstances that led him to his present situation.

In other words, the film helps us understand where the character is coming from. On the other hand, if the film becomes a box office hit, then we might see a sequel sooner rather than later.

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Though digitizing one's system and processes would make operations more convenient and streamlined, doing so in haste might make it vulnerable to attacks where there are gaps in security. Recently, the ones being targeted by ransomware are those from the healthcare industry.

In February 2016, Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center paid a then unheard of $17,000 ransom to recover their encrypted files. The attack got so much coverage that Hollywood Presbyerian now has a section on their Wikipedia page discussing the attack. The following month, MedStar Health had to turn away patients because of a SamSam attack. Unfortunately, these were just the start of ransomware attacks against healthcare providers.

These attacks can disrupt patient services, create confusion, and in 2019, have forced at least two healthcare providers to shut down. Given that these attacks are such a persistent concern, I was surprised that no one had looked at the scope of ransomware attacks against healthcare providers. It turns out that collecting data on these attacks is more complex than it first appears.

Read more on Recorded Future.

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Japanese cuisine has some of the most intricate meal preparations and traditions which have been passed down from one generation to the next. But that doesn't mean that such rigidity leaves no room for creativity or innovation. On the contrary, culinary art is a space where one's imagination and skill flourishes and evolves over time.

In an obscure place in Broadway Alley, not visible from the streets of Seattle, lies Hideaki Taneda's humble restaurant where he serves a fusion of two Japanese styles of cuisine: kaiseki and sushi.

Taneda keeps the lights on high, Japanese style, so his audience can watch him wrap sweet Canadian shrimp around uni and dot snow crab with glowing granules of caviar—“I want to show them my skill.” He’s not messing around.

He is, however, taking some liberties with two different branches of Japanese food. Before he left Tokyo, he spent six years at a restaurant that cross-pollinated kaiseki and sushi.

“It’s not very common in Japan,” he acknowledges. His own restaurant returns to this approach, embedding certain kaiseki traditions into a framework more familiar to Americans—the sushi omakase.

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We know that leaves get their green color from the chlorophyll present in them. This is the green pigmentation which helps plants absorb energy from light. So, in that case, why do leaves turn a variety of warm colors from charming reds to bright yellows in the fall? Dan West, an entomologist from Colorado State University, explains at The Denver Post.

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Artists usually tend to find inspiration from other artists and they incorporate those styles and ideas into their own work, adding their own twist to them. For Vincent Van Gogh, there were a lot of artists who had an impact on his art but none more so than the French master Jean-Francois Millet.

Today Millet (1814-75) is not particularly well known outside his native France, but in Van Gogh’s time he was arguably the world’s most famous 19th-century artist.

In 1875, as a 22-year-old living in Paris, Van Gogh had seen an exhibition of Millet’s drawings which filled him with inspiration. Six years later, when Van Gogh first set out to become an artist, he drew copies of Millet’s prints, to help improve his own figure drawing.

(Image credit: Vincent Van Gogh/Kroller-Muller Museum; Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the eyewitness accounts and the photos like the one above showing supposed evidence that mythical creatures like Bigfoot exist, I'm still not convinced. But what does keep me curious about these things is the explanation behind them. If it's not Bigfoot, what could it have been?

The series of images was reportedly taken about 2 a.m. Saturday, and posted on Facebook by Bigfoot 911, a research group devoted to creatures of folklore like the Bigfoot.

Bigfoot 911 is the same Marion-based team that reported seeing a Bigfoot two years ago in McDowell County, but it may have came closer this time to getting the proof that has long eluded believers in the Bigfoot.

“I locked right onto this creature and knew immediately it was a Bigfoot,” Bigfoot 911 member John Bruner told McClatchy news group. “He was standing there watching us, swaying back and forth. I guess he felt safe because the four of us were in a boat and he was on shore.”

The encounter lasted five minutes, he says, and ended when the ghostly figure appeared to turn and walk away.

There are many mysteries in the world which we can't readily explain. I wouldn't want to say definitively that Bigfoot does or doesn't exist. I am under the impression that since there is no strong evidence to prove its existence, I cannot say for certain whether there is or there isn't.

You can say that I'm a Bigfoot agnostic. If such a creature does in fact exist, that the photos and eyewitness accounts really did see the said creature, then what is it exactly? Is it human, half-human, hominid?

The questions just pile up and there's no end in sight. For now, it's just too unclear to give any verdict and I'm satisfied with letting the concept of Bigfoot stay in limbo.

(Image credit: Bigfoot 911)

If we can't do anything about the rampage of climate change because many refuse to reduce their carbon emissions, then the only other option we have is to prepare for the worst that climate change will bring. And many cities in the world are doing just that.

The existential threat to human life posed by climate change is increasingly penetrating the public consciousness. Experts see this as an opportunity: Humans were able to create a system that brought the Earth to the brink of collapse. We are entirely capable of designing a system that will save it. And there is an increasing number of indications that we will ultimately succeed.

It is a question of will, of politics, but above all, of money. Climate change is already costing cities across the world a lot of money. New York alone has budgeted $20 billion for "climate resilience" measures, including making rooftops greener, protections against heat damage, planting more trees and buying more low-emission buses.

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China was one of the nations who came out of WWII with big gains. However, their internal struggle didn't end when WWII ended. Instead, the clashes between ideologies continued as the Communists backed the Nationalists into a corner when they captured one city after another, almost four years following WWII.

And then finally, when the last bastions of the Nationalists fell, the Communists declared victory in Tiananmen in Beijing. Seventy years later, China has prided itself with social, economic, and political progress, and looks to maintain its status as a world superpower moving forward.

But things aren't all that clear as tensions rise not just with the US but with Taiwan and Hong Kong as well. All of this rests on the shoulders of the current leader of the CPP, President Xi Jinping, and we can only wait and see how things will unfold for China.

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Many soldiers who died in battle during WWII would never return to their loved ones as either nobody was able to identify them or they were missing in action. But for Army Tech 5th Grade John E. Bainbridge, the long wait to be brought back home is finally over as his remains have been identified and were buried in Monona, 77 years after his death.

His remains were hastily buried on the battlefield and could not be positively identified when he was reburied in early 1943 at a Buna cemetery. Bainbridge's remains were designated "Unknown X-135" when he was reinterred in 1947 in the Philippines at the Manila American Cemetery.

Bainbridge's remains were exhumed Feb. 22, 2017, and sent to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for identification using mitochondrial DNA technology and other procedures. The agency sought out Cunningham and other relatives to provide DNA samples to assist the investigation.

Bainbridge's funeral was conducted with full military honors. Brig. Gen. Joane Mathews, Wisconsin's deputy adjutant general for Army, presented the U.S. flag to Cunningham on behalf of the entire Wisconsin National Guard.

(Image credit: Master Sgt. David Fannon)

It has been 25 years since the first episode of Friends aired and in celebration of the momentous occasion, a group of friends from Auckland made their own version of the opening sequence to Friends, complete with the couch, lamp, and the fountain in the background. Watch their video on NZ Herald.

(Image credit: Romain Gabarra et al; screen cap)