There are only five living US presidents, but many of the Republican 2016 hopefuls seem to have trouble ranking them.

Last weekend during the Freedom Summit in Greeneville, South Carolina, CNN's Chris Moody asked many of the likely GOP candidates to name the greatest living president. The question left many of them stumped. CNN on Wednesday released a video of the awkward encounters.

Several of the people questioned by Moody cited Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004. One candidate, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, acknowledged he didn't know how to answer the question.

"I don't know. I'd have to think about that one for a long time," Carson said, adding: "I think everybody has their good points and their bad points."

The question poses obvious problems for the Republican field. Of the five living presidents, three are Democrats: President Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton, and President Jimmy Carter. The two living Republicans, President George H.W. Bush and President George W. Bush, are relatives of a likely 2016 candidate, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R). Furthermore, President George W. Bush left office as one of the most unpopular presidents of all time, and some members of the current GOP field have taken shots at him.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Florida), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), and Republican businessman Donald Trump all named Reagan in response to Moody's question.

"I'll leave that for the people to decide," Cruz said of his choice for the greatest living president. "Certainly, the greatest president of recent generations was Ronald Reagan."

"I really talk about a president who died relatively recently ... Ronald Reagan," Trump said.

"Obviously, I think the greatest president of my lifetime is Ronald Reagan," Jindal said.

Two of the Republicans questioned by Moody offered praise for the Bushes. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said the greatest living president was "probably a Bush." In the past, Jindal has said President George W. Bush was the best president since Reagan. He reiterated his praise for Bush in his conversation with Moody.

"I think that I would give George W. Bush credit for keeping our country safe after 9/11," Jindal said.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry walked away when confronted with Moody's question.

Watch Moody's video about the question "that stops Republican presidential hopefuls in their tracks"here.

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Over centuries of inter-state conflict on the continent Europe has seen a number of remarkable military leaders come and go.

The common thread linking all those who reached the very top of that profession is a genius for tactics and an ability to adapt mid-way through a battle in order to secure victory.

From the ancient Greeks to the modern day the tools of the game have changed dramatically but the aim remains the same for all great military commanders — to leave their mark on history.

Those that have succeeded leave behind not only the tales of extraordinary feats of bravery and skill, but also the tactical know-how passed down and used by future generations.

Of these, a few names stand out from the rest. These people helped shape the history of Europe in a way that few other individuals can claim.

8. Alexander Farnese was born in 1545 to Duke Ottavio Farnese of Parma and Margaret, the illegitimate daughter of the King of Spain, and Habsburg Emperor Charles V.

In 1579 Philip II of Spain sent Farnese to Flanders to regain control of the region from the Dutch. The siege of of the heavily-defended Antwerp began in 1585 and, due to Farnese's tactical brilliance in building a bridge to cut off the defenders from the Scheldt river, it soon fell.

7. Maarten Tromp was born on April 23, 1598 in Brielle, Holland and became the highest ranking naval commander during the during the 17th century Dutch wars with Spain and England.

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Seventy years ago Britain rejoiced. War in Europe was over. The British Army and the RAF were still fighting against the Japanese in the jungles of Burma, but for other British forces, peace finally reigned across much of the world.

Except, not quite.

For few people knew then — or realise now — that 6,000 miles away deep in the Pacific Ocean, the biggest fleet ever assembled by the Royal Navy in World War Two was entrenched in a bitter battle against Japanese kamikaze suicide planes.

The British Pacific Fleet was largely political by design, with the British Chiefs of Staff and, after some initial reluctance, Winston Churchill, deciding in September 1944 that a British strike fleet fighting alongside the vast US Navy would be recognized after the conflict as a contribution to the defeat of Japan.

Despite US reluctance, a few months later the fleet was born, spearheaded by four aircraft carriers – with dozens of smaller ships as backup — from which the 'flyboys' formed the largest airborne strike force in British naval history. Over 250 aircraft were supported by more than 10,000 sailors and aircrew.

Many of these men were schoolboys when war broke out. They now found themselves in the war’s final act: the battle for Japan. 89 per cent of British airmen were volunteers and over half had trained in America. They developed transatlantic twangs in their accents and chewed gum.

Faced with a dearth of decent home-grown machines, the Royal Navy adopted American carrier aircraft such as the F4U Corsair, a reptilian looking 400mph fighter nick-named “whistling death” by the Japanese because of the eerie whining sound it made when diving.

The Supermarine Seafire — a nautical version of its more famous cousin the Spitfire — also featured, and although it struggled with the rough and tumble of carrier landings, it excelled in the air as a kamikaze hunter.

In early March 1945, the British Pacific Fleet sailed from its base in Sydney 4,000 miles north to join the American 5th fleet. It would be away from land for the longest period of time since Nelson’s day. A ‘fleet train’ of ships maintained supplies.

The crews began to realize the huge scale of the Pacific. Day upon day they saw nothing but other ships, ocean and sky. A canvas of blues and greys. There was an unsettling vastness to it all.

Finally, as the ship neared the front line, American Rear Admiral Marc Mitscher, a master of modern carrier fighting, sent a signal: ‘Fifth Fleet welcomes Task Force 57 (the code name for the British Pacific Fleet) and wishes you good hunting.’

The Americans were preparing to invade Okinawa, the strategically crucial island just 350 miles south of the Japanese home islands. From there, the Allies could plan the invasion of Japan itself, proposed for late 1945.

"What do you think of our bloody British flight decks now?"

HMS Formidable Captain, speaking to American liason officer

The British Pacific Fleet’s aircrews were expected to hunt down kamikazes in the air or on the ground.

Why did the Japanese resort to such extreme tactics? Because they knew their air force was no match for the Allies, in short. The Allies estimated that a Japanese pilot, using conventional tactics, might make just two sorties in his lifetime, with a three per cent chance of hitting a ship. In a suicide attack, however, the chance of hitting a ship rose to between 15 and 20 per cent.

On April 1st the Americans landed in force on Okinawa. At 0650, the radar of the British Fleet stationed 200 miles to the south-east picked up a formation of about twenty aircraft flying at 8,000 feet and closing fast at 210 knots. The Japanese First Air Fleet based in Formosa was about to launch its first kamikaze attack on the British Pacific Fleet.

Admiral Philip Vian, the British air commander, directed already airborne aircraft to intercept while others took off from the carriers to beef up defences. A well-practised drill clicked into place, with the fighter control officers in the plotting rooms of the carriers following the enemy contacts on the radar, directing fighters towards them.

"I didn’t want to admit how scared I was," said one crew member. "You have a large fleet of aeroplanes approaching, many of whom will probably be kamikazes. They don’t drop bombs that probably miss you, they hit you, and doing nothing, hanging around waiting, was petrifying.’

The fighter direction rooms in the carriers were tense, hushed and lit only by the bluish glow of the radar screens. The only sounds over the hum of the ventilation fans were the quiet voice of the fighter direction officer passing the airborne aircraft their courses to intercept the enemy and the loud intermittent fuzz over the radio as the pilots radioed back acknowledgements. In the thick of the action a few thousand feet above, the pilots’ voices were strained and tense.

The last line of defence was the fleet’s gunfire, which now opened up in a thunderous roar, peppering the surrounding skies with hundreds of explosions.

For the gunners on deck this was both terrifying and exhilarating. One, hunched in his seat and crouched like a jockey, sang at the top of his voice, ‘How we gonna keep ’em down on the farm?’ to the rhythm of his gun, watching the little yellow tennis balls of tracer bubble up from its muzzle.

Dogfights littered the sky, which was filled with thick smoke, making the panorama of the battlefield even more disorienting. The fleet’s fighters managed to shoot down some Japanese aircraft but others penetrated the fighter screen.

One Japanese fighter broke through the bursting flak, swooping low over British carrier Indomitable. Bullets crackled and popped along the entire length of the flight deck, ripping through a group of running sailors, killing one and wounding six.

Dickie Reynolds, a 22-year-old pilot nicknamed ‘Deadeye Dick’ because of his skill in shooting down enemy aircraft, engaged a Japanese Mitsubishi Zero, twisting and turning in his Seafire.

With some sharp shooting he managed to pepper a wing with cannon fire, but before he could get his aircraft into position to deliver the kill, the Zero rolled onto its back and smashed into the flight deck of British carrier Indefatigable, causing an enormous ball of flame which covered the ship from stem to stern.

Armed with a 550-pound bomb, the kamikaze hit the ship at the junction of the flight deck and the island, exploding on impact, killing three officers and five ratings instantly. The ship’s barber, who also acted as a messenger during action stations, said later "the smell of dead flesh stayed there and in that part of the island till the day I left the ship".

This was 360-degree warfare, directly affecting everyone, regardless of rank. "The kamikazes didn’t distinguish between the admiral or the boy sailor," one seaman said. "The skipper later joked with us it had been an Easter egg sent by Hirohito. But we felt we were all in it together."

For weeks afterwards some men reported seeing ghosts walking through flames on the flight deck.

In their squadron diary the pilots of 894 Seafire squadron in Indefatigable gave their own unique account. "APR 1 'ALL FOOLS DAY' and did we buy it! Early in the morning the Japs attacked with suicides – their first reaction . . . Diving from 2,000 ft, it hit the bottom of the island doing no mean rate of knots. SPLATTTTT!" Despite the carnage, aircraft were taking off and landing on the ship less than an hour later. Unlike the wooden flight decks of the American carriers, the British ships had four-inch armoured flight decks.

When the Royal Navy carrier Formidable survived a kamikaze attack on May 4th, filling in a hole caused by the attack with quick drying cement, its captain grasped the arm of an American liaison officer standing alongside and, shaking his fist, asked, "What do you think of our bloody British flight decks now?"

"Sir," came the reply, "they’re a honey."

Wally Stradwick in Miami in late 1943, soon after receiving his wings after learning to fly in America during the war

Wally Stradwick, a 22-year old pilot from Clapham, was flying his Corsair at 6,000ft above Formidable when he saw a kamikaze pilot crash into its flight deck. In his diary he recalled: "One of our carriers appeared to explode. I could only see the bows protruding from a colossal pall of black smoke in the centre of which was an ugly sheet of flame."

Formidable was attacked again on May 9th, 1945. "As a terror weapon, these kamikazes have a quality of their own," one officer in Formidable later wrote. "There is [still] something unearthly about an approaching aeroplane whose pilot is hell bent on diving himself right into the ship. 'Wherever you are, he seems to be aiming straight for you personally."

Another sailor, from Portsmouth, said: "I remember thinking, I’ve been through the Blitz; we’ve had bombs, we’ve had incendiaries, we’ve had landmines thrown at us, but it’s the first time I’ve had the bloody plane thrown at me as well. You feel that it’s aimed at you, especially when he looks around and you think: can he see me?"

For the pilots too, the enemy was unknown. "It’s a dirty war; all war is dirty, this one particularly so," wrote 22-year old Chris Cartledge, a Corsair pilot with 1842 squadron in a letter home on 16 May 1945. "Judging by the fanatical methods of defence used by the Japs they do not intend to give in however hard pressed…one cannot anticipate the reactions of a race so radically different from us. We can’t apply our logic to them."

Hunting down these fanatical flyers before they attacked the fleet became a game of cat and mouse. The tactics books used in the previous six years of war were ripped up. Often pilots were deployed by their ships without success.

Between April 1st and May 9th 1945 every single British aircraft carrier on the front line was hit by kamikazes, killing 44 men and wounding almost 100. Its pilots shot down more than 40 enemy aircraft, the majority of them suicide bombers.

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NOW WATCH: We went inside a secret basement under Grand Central that was one of the biggest World War II targets

It's tough to know what happened on Earth thousands of years before anyone started writing anything down. But thanks to the amazing work of anthropologists and paleontologists like those working on National Geographic's Genographic Project, we can begin to piece together the story of our ancestors. Here's how early humans spread from East Africa all around the world. 

Produced by Alex Kuzoian

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For more than three decades, two amazing relics of medical history lay rotting underneath a Yale University dorm—Dr. Harvey Cushing’s collection of brains, and his collection of patient photography. The former has been given its own exhibition space in  Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, open to the public since 2010. About 500 brains sit in the $1.4 million-dollar Cushing Center, carefully preserved in the leaden glass jars in which they arrived. 

The 10,000 glass plates, though, have only just begun their journey to public consumption.  Its contents are finally beginning to be seen—the pictures in this story have only been digitized in the past year and they are published here for the first time. The images are staggering.

Babies with distended skulls sit on a mother's knee. Neat scars form patterns on patient skulls, like farmland seen from an airplane window. Often, the photos are taken in profile, or are a close-up of hands. Some of the most bewitching pictures involve a patient staring at the camera head-on, with a directness rare in today's selfie-strewn world.

 “They just keep revealing themselves,” says Terry Dagradi, Cushing Center Coordinator, “They are amazing not because they were shot to be amazing. They were shot to be documentary, shot as the history of neuroscience was being born.” 

The path of both the brains and the patient photos is circuitous. Its formal title is the Cushing Tumor Registry, and it represents the work of Cushing from 1900 to 1933. The doctor, who was born in Cleveland in 1869, graduated from Yale and then spent his professional career at places like Johns Hopkins and Harvard—a career that profoundly shapes our understanding of the brain.

Cushing was a pioneer in neuroscience, with tumors being of particular interest to him. (He also won a Pulitzer Prize in 1926 for a biography of his mentor, Dr. William Oster, among other accomplishments including diagnosing the disease named after him, Cushing disease.) Beginning in 1902, he began saving specimens of his work along with immense amounts of documentation: By the time his registry arrived (with the doctor) at Yale in 1934, Cushing had collected more than 2,200 case studies, including brain specimens, tumor specimens and 15,000 photo negatives, both on film and glass plate.

According to Dagradi, it was a woman, Dr. Louise Eisenhardt, who first looked after the collection. “It had a place of importance and research,” says Dagradi, “She was one of the masterminds of how the collection was put together.” After her death in 1967, as better scanning technology began to displace the need for physical specimens, “it turned into an inherited problem.”

So Cushing’s brains, as they were called, were moved into the basement of a Yale medical school dorm in 1979. They weren’t lost, exactly, but they were kept as a curiosity. According to the collection’s website, students would enter through a crawl space and then sign a whiteboard to be members of the “Brain Society.” It wasn’t until the 1990s that a student named Christopher John Wahl took an interest in the collection, and funding was found to exhume it from the basement.

The brains had been a known commodity, but the photography was a surprise. There were mostly glass plate negatives, but some film was found as well. Thirty years of dormitory storage took its toll. “It was a wet basement that would get really hot and the plates were stacked on top of each other,” Dagradi says.”  The film negatives did not stand up to time, sadly.

But around 10,000 black-and-white posed photographs of patients in varying states of treatment survived. “The photographs revealed this whole other aspect to the collection,” says Dagradi, who was a photographer working for Yale when the mid-'90s project began,” I got obsessed with the images.”  It’s not hard to see why: While it can be hard to look at some pictures, of say, children with swollen faces, the images capture people at their most vulnerable and human. There is something incredibly contemporary about the poses. 

Dagradi says that there is no way to know who took the pictures. They were snapped over a 30-year period and reflect photographers of varying skill, resulting in over and under exposed images. But while these pictures might look like Diane Arbus outtakes, they were done purely for documentary purposes. “They couldn't see into the body the way that we can now, so photos could be critical to diagnosing patients,” says Dagradi. Of particular diagnostic value for Dr. Cushing were faces and hands: veins being clogged or fingernail defects were strong evidence of certain diseases.

Over a decade into the process of unboxing, recording, digitizing and cataloging the pictures, Dagradi says Dr. Cushing’s collection still holds mysteries. Who were the patients? Who were the photographers? What is the story behind a man’s Frankenstein-like scars on his head, or a young girl’s tumorous forehead? Of the thousands of images, she estimates that only a quarter, around 2,500, have been cataloged completely, a laborious process that involves matching the case number on the photo to Dr. Cushing’s specimens and other written documentation. (At one time, Dagradi says, the files were perfectly laid out but then archivists finally pulled the lot from the basement, there was “no way of figuring out how to order them.”) In the future, all of this information will be in a searchable database.

Names are difficult to confirm and Dagradi says that even though it is unlikely that any of the people pictured are still alive, medical ethics prohibit her from releasing any identifying information.

So, every day, Dagradi and her team look at more of Dr. Cushing’s patients. Medical grotesqueries don't shock her anymore but some pictures still catch her off-guard. “There are these photos of children that have some kind of a distressed condition, yet there's an attempt to smile, a kind of lopsided smile. They look so fragile,” she says, “There’s this sense that this might be the only photo ever taken of them—the girl with the perfect satin bow, or maybe a kid wearing a threadbare piece of fabric, the incidental nurse peeking around a corner, or an orderly, holding someone up who is barely alive.” The images might be grim, capturing people at the end of their lives, but the intent of the photographer is hopeful. If Dr. Cushing could understand that one malady better through these patient images, maybe then someone else could be saved.

The Cushing Center is part of the Obscura Day 2015 schedule. To get more information and tickets, go here.  

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Fifteen years after the Israeli army withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000, the Defense Ministry released footage of the last convoys returning to the border under fire and the demolition of the infamous Beaufort outpost.

The last Israeli troops withdrew from southern Lebanon on May 24, 2000, ending the Israeli army’s 18-year presence in the security zone. The Israeli army demolished the Beaufort outpost with explosives as they withdrew.

Army officials had planned to demolish another outpost in the same area, the Dlaat outpost, at the same time. Dlaat was spared due to a technical problem and was later demolished by Hezbollah forces, Haaretz reported.

The video, which had been kept until now in the Defense Ministry’s archives, shows a convoy of troops leaving the outpost just moments before the explosion that demolished it. The Israeli troops can be seen moving toward the border under Hezbollah fire.

The Israeli army’s stay in southern Lebanon from June 1982 to May 2000 claimed the lives of 1,216 Israeli soldiers.

The ongoing fighting and the mounting number of soldiers killed gave rise to increasing public pressure to withdraw from Lebanon, leading then-prime minister Ehud Barak to promise that the withdrawal would take place within a year of his taking office in 1999, according to a report on Channel 2’s website.

The withdrawal was seen as harried and chaotic, as Hezbollah rushed to take over areas left by Israel and members of the Jerusalem-backed Southern Lebanon Army and their families fled south to escape the country.

During the demolition of the Beaufort outpost, the Israeli army was careful to spare the ruins of the 12th-century Crusader castle for which it was named.

The castle, which was taken during the first Lebanon war in 1982 in a battle that claimed many Israeli casualties, became a symbol of the Israeli army’s presence in Lebanon, just as its evacuation in 2000 became a symbol for retreat.

Joseph Cedar’s 2007 film “Beaufort,” which told the story of the last Israeli soldiers stationed at the outpost, was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Film category.

Soldiers who fought in southern Lebanon between 1982 and 2000 are waging a struggle to have their tours of duty recognized as wartime service, Haaretz reported.

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A Los Angeles diner celebrated as a classic example of mid-20th century Space Age-style Googie architecture was granted historic monument status by city officials on Wednesday, protecting it from the threat of demolition.

The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously with three people absent to designate the 1956 Norms restaurant as a "historic-cultural monument," citing the need to preserve distinctive buildings of the city.

Owners of the restaurant and cultural touchstone on La Cienega Boulevard had obtained a demolition permit earlier this year, prompting conservationists and officials to rally to preserve the site. They obtained a unanimous recommendation from the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission to protect it.

"One of the worst things about L.A. is that we've torn down a lot of our heritage," City Councilman Paul Koretz told Reuters. "One of the best things is we're now fighting to save it."

Under the new designation, developers seeking to change or raze the site would need to undergo significant and lengthy reviews.

"We expect there's not any way it will get demolished," said Koretz, adding that he is working with the owners to keep Norms at the site.

The restaurant, part of the Norms diner chain in Southern California, was designed by architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis. It is famous as an example of Googie architecture with its cantilevered roofline, sharp angles and sweeping curves.

The post-World War Two architectural style originated in Southern California and was often employed for coffee shops. It is characterized by Space Age design elements, taking influences from cars and jets.

It has also influenced the city's artists and writers.

Tom Waits mentioned the Norms location in his song "Eggs and Sausage," while artist Edward Ruscha painted it in his "Norms La Cienega On Fire" and "Mad Men" creator Matthew Weiner wrote early notes there for the hit television show that depicted 1960s America.

Koretz called it perhaps the best remaining example of the Googie style in Los Angeles, and said he aims to work with owner JDM Holdings to keep it alive as a "community institution."

A number of other notable eateries similar to the Norms location have been torn down over the years in Los Angeles, he said.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Frances Kerry)

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The job interview was born in 1921, when Thomas Edison created a written test to evaluate job candidates' knowledge. 

Since then, the process has come a long way.

"As the work world continues to grow and change with the latest technologies and innovations, so must the job interview," explains career expert Heather R. Huhman.

The infographic below, compiled by video interview platform Spark Hire, takes a look at how job interviews have evolved throughout history, and predictions for how the process will continue to change in the future.

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Old photos have an uncanny way of connecting us to our past and creating a window to see back in time. And fortunately for a city like New York, with such a rich history, there are a lot of vintage photographs that capture days gone by.

But never before have they been visualized like this. 

The New York Public Library, along with some history buff developers, recently launched OldNYC.org, which features an interactive map that plots thousands of photos to the location they depict. Each location is marked by a red dot. As you can see below, there's a lot of photos — one or more for nearly every street corner.

Once you click on a red dot, you're presented with one or more photos of that street and specific street corner. The photos come from the New York Public Library's Milstein Collection and date from the 1870s to the 1970s, with a many of them taken during the 1920s to the 1940s by photographer Percy Loomis Sperr.

Especially for someone familiar with New York City, it's the type of website you can spend hours on. I immediately began looking up places where I've lived and worked. The church next to my old apartment on East 11th St. still looks the same!

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Beneath the present-day surface that every city shows to the world, there are shadows of the city as it was in previous eras. In some places—Rome is a good example—that ghost city of the past lives side by side with the current one. In others, such as New York, it is more efficiently hidden, although it can show itself in surprising places.

A newly launched website, OldNYC, reveals the New York City that once was. It’s the work of software engineer Dan Vanderkam, who has mapped some 40,000 photos from the collection of the New York Public Library, making it possible for you to click on a random street corner and see what once was there.

Vanderkam has been working on the project in collaboration with library staff since early 2013. It’s entirely a volunteer labor of love, and he says he has “absolutely no idea” how much time he’s put into it. “I’m frightened to even think about it,” he says. “But having projects like this is a nice creative outlet. It’s been a really fun thing for me to work with.”

Vanderkam used to live in San Francisco, where he produced OldSF a few years back. New York posed its own special challenges, not just because of scale, but because of the way the pictures are formatted. One daunting task was to capture the typewritten captions on the back of the pictures, since manual input would have been impossibly time-consuming. The optical character-recognition software that Vanderkam used is imperfect, and he is looking for users to help correct resulting errors.

“My hope is that users will leave their own anecdotes about the photos and improve the quality of data on the site, by flagging inaccuracies and typos,” he says. He’s also hoping to add a time-slider feature, and to incorporate more pictures from additional NYPL collections.

The site is endlessly fascinating just the way it is, though. Who knew about Hoffman Island in New York Harbor, “an artificial island constructed in 1872 by the New York State Quarantine Service for the detention and purification of well persons arriving in infected vessels,” where New Yorkers suspected of having deadly diseases such as cholera were quarantined? I didn’t. What about the Consumer’s Brewery at 54th and York? Or the magnificent “weeping beech,” more than 200 years old, that once grew on 37th Avenue near Parsons Boulevard in Queens?

The site opens countless such wormholes into the past. Be forewarned. You won’t want to stop exploring.

SEE ALSO: Watch New York City age 500 years in 60 seconds in this time-lapse video

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NOW WATCH: 5 things in New York City that will disappear as sea levels rise and weather patterns change

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Whiskey is experiencing a huge comeback in America.

Walk into any trendy New York City bar today and you'll almost certainly find a variety of bourbons and Scotches on the shelf and a handful of whiskey-fueled cocktails on the menu.

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This Monday is Memorial Day, the unofficial start to Summer across New York City and the rest of the Northern Hemisphere.

To celebrate the impending summer months, we've culled together this beautiful collection of vintage photos of Brooklyn taken in the summer of 1974.

Photographer Danny Lyon spent two months snapping pictures of the daily life in the borough — exploring Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Green and Park Slope among other neighborhoods. We think they'll get you in the mood for the season, even if you've never been to the BK.

Manhattan Bridge Tower in Brooklyn, framed through nearby buildings.

Williamsburg Bridge facing towards Manhattan.

View from under elevated train tracks at Bushwick Avenue

The collapse of the Soviet Union created one of the biggest security challenges of recent decades: The task of securing fissile material left unguarded after the empire's rapid collapse and transferring thousands of forward-deployed Soviet nuclear warheads to places where they would stay out of the wrong hands.

The international community could count a number of successes in the effort to contain the former Soviet Union's nuclear materials.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum transferred the Ukrainian, Belorussian, and Kazakh nuclear arsenals to Russia, while the contemporaneous "Megatons to Megawatts" program enabled the US to use material from disassembled Russian warheads in order to fuel American civilian reactors.

But there were still some gaps in the anti-proliferation efforts after the Soviet Union's fall, as David Hoffman reported in "The Dead Hand," his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2009 book about the end of the Cold War arms race.

And one of the more alarming failures relates back to the most pressing nuclear proliferation issue of the present day.

As Hoffman reports, Iran immediately positioned itself to take advantage of the loose material, idle weapons scientists, and general chaos left in the Soviet Union's wake.

In the years after the empire's disintegration, Tehran recruited Russian rocket scientists, attempted to get ahold of nuclear weapons material, and solicited cooperation from Soviet bloc experts on a possible biological weapons program.

Hoffman's book shows that Iran began positioning itself for a nuclear weapons capability long before the country's program became a focus of international attention.

And it shows that there's a human element to nonproliferation that sanctions, inspection and export control regimes can't always account for.

The activities Hoffman describes would have been hard to detect through traditional trade monitoring and impossible to find through aerial surveillance. Iran's activities largely evaded the world's attention — and fed into a nuclear program that's now the subject of urgent international diplomacy.

As Hoffman reports, several countries, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq, scoured the post-collapse Soviet Union for whatever fissile materials or weapons scientists they could pinpoint. But "Iran was especially active," opening "a special office ... in Tehran's embassy in Moscow to search for and acquire weapons technology."

'More scientists and engineers from the former Soviet Union than they knew what to do with'

In the mid-1990s Iranians made a concerted effort to attract rocket scientists and their agents in Moscow "approached the prestigious Moscow Aviation Institute, a school for missile and rocket technology."

Vadim Vorobei, a Russian expert on the construction of liquid-fueled rocket engines at the institute, noticed that "graduate students from Iran started to appear. They enrolled to study rocket engineering." Vorobei then agreed to lecture in Iran, becoming part of what Hoffman calls "a larger underground railroad of Russian rocket scientists," according to the book.

Tehran was soon awash in experts from the former Soviet Union: "Although the Iranians made a show of keeping the scientists apart, Vorobei said, they frequently bumped into each other at hotels and restaurants. One day, he would spot a leading Russian missile guidance specialist; the next, a well known missile engineer from Ukraine. All had been brought to Tehran on the pretext of giving lectures on rocket technology."

Vorobei said the effort was "a bit of a circus," since, in Hoffman's words, "The Iranians brought more scientists and engineers from the former Soviet Union than they knew what to do with."

Long-range missiles

There is virtually only one reason to build long-range ballistic missiles, and that's to launch strategic weapons capable of taking out entire cities or military bases in a single shot.

A ballistic missile is an awkward and expensive way to deliver a conventional payload, and there's no modern precedent for a country launching conventional warheads 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers) from their border. All nuclear-armed states possess missiles capable of traveling more than 1,500 miles, but only two non-nuclear states have weapons that can operate at that range: Iran, which likely had an active nuclear weapons program as recently as 2003, and Saudi Arabia, which is certainly keeping its options open.

Iran was actively developing a long-range nuclear delivery system in the early 1990s. But it was also scouring the former Soviet Union for actual bomb material. 

"We knew that Iran was all over Central Asia and the Caucasus with their purchasing agents," said Jeff Starr, a former high-ranking Pentagon disarmament official, according to Hoffman. 

"The Dead Hand" reports one particularly worrying close call in 1994: In a warehouse in Kazakhstan where the US helped remove an unguarded stockpile of weapons-grade uranium, a US diplomat noticed "a shipment of beryllium, which is used as a neutral reflector in an atomic bomb, packed in crates.

"Stenciled on the side was an address: Tehran, Iran. Apparently a paperwork glitch was the only thing that had kept the shipment from being sent."

Biological weapons

Iran has indigenous sources of uranium, and material proved to be less important to its weapons programs than expertise — including expertise at concealing Tehran's true activities and intentions.

Today, Iran's nuclear development is couched in a series of civilian pretexts. Iran claims it needs nuclear reactors for medical isotopes and electricity, even though those isotopes can be easily purchased on the international market, and Iran is a leading oil producer. 

Meanwhile, the US has sanctioned dozens of government-linked Iranian entities, including banks, telecoms, and oil companies, for providing civilian cover for various aspects of the country's nuclear program.

"The Dead Hand" also describes how the Iranians used government-sanctioned front companies to import materials that could be used for the development of biological weapons. 

As Hoffman recounts, Andy Weber, a US State Department official who took the lead on securing weapons stockpiles in the former Soviet Union, learned from Russian biological weapons scientists that Iran was searching out experts from Russia's recently-shuttered program.

From "The Dead Hand":

What really alarmed [Weber] was a discussions with a senior scientist at Obolensk who had been on the trip to Tehran.  "'They talk about pharmaceuticals,'  the scientist said, 'but it's clear their interest is in dual use equipment that can be used for biological weapons.'"

The scientists said the Iranians had offered him thousands of dollars to teach in Tehran. And then the scientist took a business card from his wallet, which had been given to him by the Iranians. He showed it to Weber, who immediately recognized the name and the office: a front for the military and intelligence services in their drive to procure Russia's weapons.

It's widely believed that Iran had some kind of nuclear weaponization program in the early 2000s and that the country suspended research under international pressure.

But the history of Iran's procurement efforts leaves little doubt that the country was working towards a weapons capability as soon as Soviet material and expertise became available — even if this decades-old quest for a bomb may have been frozen as Iran and a US-led group of nations work towards a nuclear agreement.

This history also shows just how hard it can be to stop a country that's committed to developing a strategic weapons program. Iran used academic exchanges, civilian front companies, and clandestine procurement to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities. These are discrete activities with a convincing veneer of legality to them.

With enough patience, and enough time — and without a highly invasive and perhaps unrealistic level of international regulatory scrutiny — a country can gradually build a weapons program, one scientific exchange or illicit shipment at a time.

The methods that Hoffman describes shows just how long Iran has coveted advanced weapons capabilities. And it's a reminder that plenty of other countries could work towards those capabilities in ways that might take years to finally detect.

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In 1587, during the Tudor period, Cambridge theologian Everard Digby published "De Art Natandi," or "The Art of Swimming," as a practical guide for people who wanted to learn to swim. It's the first swimming manual written and printed in the UK and an important and practical guide for everyday use. The book's pages were even covered in wax, most likely to keep the pages dry next to water when its reader was swimming.

The first half of the book covers the theory of swimming while the last half discusses technique. It even provides over 40 illustrations of the moves printed from wood carvings. The manual not only gives very practical safety advice, including swimming with a partner and slowly easing into waters of unknown depth, but it also contains distinct and humorous descriptions for techniques still in use.

Below are some of the illustrations of Digby's work that actually taught people in the 16th century how to swim.

1. The Roach Turn

Who knew this swimming move, which can make you look as if you're floundering in water, actually had a name?

There is another kind of turning when a man is swimming upon his belly with his head one way: suddenly to turn himself, still being upon his belly, and bring about his head and all his body the other way. And for that it is to be done quickly (as oft times you may see the fishes within the water, when in the pleasant heat of summer they wantonly frisk to and fro), it is commonly called "the roach turn," and that is how it is done. If he will turn towards the right hand, he must suddenly put the water from him with his left hand, and pull that water behind towards him with his right hand, turning back his head and his body as you see in [this] figure

2. To Paddle Like a Dog

Digby gives a very ornate description of doggie paddling:

Into this kind of swimming many do at the first fall, before they perfectly learn the right stroke. And there is this difference betwixt them, that whereas in the right kind [of stroke] he stretcheth out his hands and his feet, in this he rudely beateth the water with his hands and feet, first lifting his right hand out of the water and then his right foot, and forcibly striking them into the water again.

3. To Seek Anything That Is Lost in Water

The secret to picking up toys at the bottom of 16th-century rivers and ponds:

He must swim under the water as afore but as near the bottom as he can, so that he touch it not lest he raise any mud to thicken the water, his eyes open that he may see where it lieth.

And if so be that he have any occasion to turn himself, or to seek round about as thinking himself near the thing he seeketh, if he will turn towards the left hand, he must with his right hand pull towards him the water which is on his left side, which will easily turn him about, as this picture next following showeth by example:

But thus much to him which learneth to dive: let him never swim further than he can see the bottom, for it is either very deep or else he is under some bank, or in some such danger.

4. To Swim Backward

Before swimsuits, you apparently had to cover your privates when in the water, at least in books.

That is when one, lying upon his back with his body stretched forth, and holding up his breast as much as he can that his back may lie hollow, which will keep him from sinking and lifting easily one foot after another above the water, and so drawing them forcibly toward him under the water, they will pull his body backward.

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It's allergy season again, so there's a lot of sneezing going around.

Sneezing can be caused by crazy things like being too full, seeing a bright light, or even orgasm. For how common sneezing is — other animals sneeze too — scientists actually know very little about the phenomenon.

In most cases, "a sneeze is designed to expel foreign particles and irritants from your airway, particularly your nasal cavity, and is a protective reflex, said Dr. Jonathan Moss of Charlotte Eye Ear Nose & Throat Associates, in an email.

And what comes after a sneeze? In the US it's traditionally a "bless you."

"The Greeks and Romans took sneezing as a sign of wellness and expressed their good wishes to the person who sneezed using the phrase 'live long,' or 'May Jupiter bless you,'" according to a Turkish scientific review of sneezing and itching published last year in Nasal Physiology and Pathophysiology of Nasal Disorders.

But somewhere along the way, sneezing fell out of good graces.

In the 14th century Pope Gregory VII asked that 'God Bless You,' become "a short prayer to be said after every sneeze to protect against the plague," said the authors in the review.

Another potential response? The German word "Gesundheit," which means "health." 

According to this amazing Wikipedia page of "Sneezing Responses" around the world, many countries around the world reference health and longevity in their sneezing responses, only some referring to God. 

Leslie Baehr contributed to this post. 

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In Northern Spain, the crumbling skeletons of 28 early humans who died approximately 430,000 years ago sit in an underground cave system. Their cause of death — and how they ended up in a pile at the bottom of a 50-foot vertical shaft —remains a mystery.

But according to a new study published in PLoS, involving some true detective work, gashes on one of the skulls suggest that at least one poor hominin was likely murdered with a blunt weapon.

The findings suggest that interpersonal violence and its tragic outcomes may be almost half a million years old.

Early humans seem to have hit each other on the head quite often (finally lending some scientific credence to our Flintsones-fueled obsession with cavemen and clubs).

Signs of head trauma on ancient human fossils are actually "relatively common," says Nohemi Sala, co-author on the study and professor at Complutense University in Spain. "Most cases show signs of healing, indicating survival of the individual," she adds.

But one skull at the bottom of that shaft, dubbed Cranium 17, was different. "It would seem to represent a case of lethal interpersonal violence," Sala says. Murder.

The unfortunate owner of Cranium 17 seems to have been bludgeoned above the left eye twice. By applying modern forensic techniques to the ancient skull, Sala and her team determined that both fractures occurred while the early human was still alive, and appear to have been caused by two separate swings of the same blunt weapon.

Trajectory and contour analysis confirmed that the blows were unlikely to have been an accident, from a fall or a mammoth hunt gone terribly wrong. Cranium 17, the authors conclude, likely represents the earliest case of murder in human history.

So it was the butler (early hominin), with a candlestick (analogous, blunt object) in the library (50-foot deep shaft). But how did the bodies end up in a pile underground?

Here the authors suggest a controversial, but fascinating, explanation—the early humans put them there, in what would be easily the earliest case of ritual burial ever documented. If confirmed, there may be a silver lining at the bottom of that dark, ancient shaft.

Humans may have been killing each other since time immemorial, but perhaps they've also been caring for the dead, in a display of sentimentality that prior studies suggest began no earlier than 100,000 years ago.

"We have documented that the intentional interpersonal violence is a behavior that accompanies humans since at least 430,000 years ago, but so does the care of sick or even the care of the dead," Sala says. "After all, we have not changed much in the last half million years." Clubs don't kill people. People kill people.

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Historians always want to talk about how battles were won with a general’s brilliance or a unit’s bravery.

But sometimes they are decided in somewhat less elegant ways. For instance, here are seven times alcohol played an major role in a confrontation's outcome:

A German officer loses key bridges on D-Day because he got drunk with his girlfriend

In his book, “Pegasus Bridge,” Stephen E. Ambrose of “Band of Brothers” fame details the night of drinking German Major Hans Schmidt had before his unit was attacked by British Paratroopers. His men were guarding two key bridges over the river Orne, and he was supposed to order their destruction if the Allies came close to capturing them. The bridges were wired with explosives and could have been destroyed instantly with an order from Schmidt.

But Schmidt was drinking the night of the attack and wasn’t there to give the order. When he sobered up, he tried to get to the battlefield and accidentally rode past the British lines. He was captured with his driver and the British held the bridges, protecting Allied paratroopers from a German counterattack.

During the Civil war, a nearly defeated army survives because an enemy commander is too drunk to attack

On Dec. 31, 1862, the first day of the Battle of Stone River, the Confederate Army attacked the Union near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. General Braxton Bragg’s battle plan worked nearly as designed and thousands of Union soldiers were captured.

The attack would’ve been more successful, but Maj. Gen Benjamin F. Cheatham’s brigades were severely late and disorganized after the drunk Cheatham fell from his horse while rallying his troops.

The Union Army nearly retreated, but the generals decided they had just enough troops left to hold the position, troops they likely wouldn’t have had if Cheatham had attacked as planned. The Federal soldiers held it together for two days before Union artillery wiped out 1,800 Confederates in less than an hour on Jan. 2, 1863. The Union gained the momentum and won the battle.

Ulysses S. Grant’s entire military career

Ulysses S. Grant had a well-documented alcohol problem, but historians think it may have actually made his career.

James McPherson won a Pulitzer Prize for his book, “Battle Cry of Freedom.” In it, he says that Grant’s “predisposition to alcoholism may have made him a better general. His struggle for self-discipline enabled him to understand and discipline others; the humiliation of prewar failures gave him a quiet humility that was conspicuously absent from so many generals with a reputation to protect; because Grant had nowhere to go but up, he could act with more boldness and decision than commanders who dared not risk failure.”

Basically, Grant was already dealing with so much disdain because of his alcoholism that he didn’t care if he failed. This caused him to be more aggressive in battle than other generals were likely to be. Grant once cut himself off from everything but ammunition and medical supplies on purpose so he could attack Vicksburg.

When the attack failed to take the city, Grant just turned the attack into a two-month siege — that ultimately succeeded). It should be noted, however, that Grant was absent for some of the siege since he was enjoying a two-day bender on the River Yazoo.

Samurai party so hard they don’t realize they’re under attack

Imagawa Yoshimoto, a powerful Japanese commander in 1560 with 35,000 soldiers, decided he wanted to try and take the capital of Japan at the time, Kyoto. On his way to Kyoto, Yoshimoto attempted to capture fortresses owned by Oda Nobunaga. Nobunaga was only able to raise 2,500 samurai to face the opposing force.

Nobunaga marched with his forces to a fortress near Okehazama, Japan. When Nobunaga saw Yoshimoto’s forces drinking and partying, he ordered a small force to occupy the fortress and plant the flags of the army all around it. With the rest of his men, he slipped around the drunken samurai and approached from the rear.

Nobunaga’s fought against 12 to 1 odds, but the victory was complete. Yoshimoto reportedly left his tent to complain about the noise before he realized he was hearing an attack, not the party.

Yoshimoto wounded a single enemy soldier before he was killed. Nobunaga and his forces killed all but two of the senior officers before the remaining samurai fled or surrendered.

An Ottoman sultan loses his entire navy for some casks of wine

Ottoman Sultan Selim II drank so much his nickname was, “The Sot.” His love of wine is one of the most popular explanations for his invasion of Cyprus in 1570. Though the invasion went well at first, this play for the famed Cypriot wine would cost the sultan dearly.

As fortresses in Cyprus fell to Selim, Pope Pius V was trying to get European leaders to build a naval armada to attack the Ottomans. It took over a year for the countries to agree on the alliance’s terms, but Europe created a massive naval fleet that confronted the Ottomans at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. When the naval battle began, 300 Ottoman ships faced off against 200 Christian ships of greater quality. Historians believe 90 percent of ships in the Mediterranean at the time were involved in the battle.

Despite having roughly equal forces, the Christians stomped Selim so hard they made a profit.

Twelve European galleys were sank, and 8,000 Christian fighters died. But, Christians liberated 15,000 slaves and captured 117 galleys. The Ottomans lost most of their Navy both in terms of ships and personnel. Selim II did still capture Cyprus with his armies and was able to drink its famed wines to his content, but it probably took a lot of drinking for him to forget what he paid for it.

Russian troops get bored before a battle and drink too much to fight

In “A History of Vodka,” Viliam Vasil’evich Pokhlebkin details what Russian fighters drank while they waited for a small enemy force to arrive for a battle in 1377. It’s mostly mead, ale, and beer.

While the exact numbers of troops on each side are no longer known, the armies of five Russian warlords were assembled at the river. But, they were so drunk that the Mongols of the Blue Horde just showed up and started slaughtering them. The supreme commander of the forces, Ivan Dmitriyevich, drowned along with some of his staff before the horde even made it to him.

The river’s original name was lost to history because it became known as the River Pyana, meaning “drunken,” after the defeat.

The Trojan Horse

It’s definitely the best known of the entries on this list. The prince of Troy claimed a Greek king’s wife as a prize owed to him by Aphrodite. The wife, Helen, agreed and was married, kicking off a war between the Greeks and the Trojans.

After 9 years of war, a Greek general came up with a plan of faking a retreat and leaving an offering of a giant wooden horse. Greek soldiers hid out in the horse. The horse was towed into the city and the Trojans began a night of epic celebrations.

They drank, snag, and feasted until they passed out. That’s when Greek soldiers crept from the horse, opened the gates, and slaughtered every Trojan they encountered.

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The following passage comes from an interview in "The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War," with Capt. Yoram Zamosh, a company commander in Israeli Paratroop Battalion 71 during the 1967 Middle East War. 

On June 7, 1967, the third day of the war, Zamosh fought in a little-known battle that would greatly impact the making of the modern Middle East.

After three days of fighting in West and East Jerusalem, Zamosh was among the first soldiers to reach the Western Wall, the last remnant of the Temple.

His testimony offers a profound insight into how many Israelis today feel about their ancient capital, about the idea of "pre-'67 borders" as a basis for a future Palestinian state, and about the parameters of a lasting peace, when and if it should finally come.

Capt. Yoram Zamosh:

When we of "A" Company entered the Lion’s Gate on the morning of June 7, our object, despite the ongoing gunfire and the danger from enemy snipers, was only to reach the Western Wall. Moshe Stempel had joined us then, my dear friend and our deputy brigade commander.

Together we had swept across the Temple Mount and passed through the Moroccan Gate. We were on the steps above the Wall, but had not yet gone down to take possession of it.

Stempel ordered me to send one of my men down while the rest of us followed him back up to find a place above the Wall where we could hang the flag of Israel that I had carried all night and all day and all night and day again.

I picked a young sergeant named Dov Gruner.

Moshe Stempel was asked once by a journalist, “Why did you pick Dov Gruner to be first to the Wall?”

“I did not pick him,” Stempel replied. “History did.”

Moshe Stempel was killed one year later, in the Jordan Valley, pursuing Palestinian terrorists who had penetrated the border. Stempel was hit in the first exchange of fire, but continued to lead the pursuit, under fire, until he was killed.

Years earlier, in 1955, he had been awarded the Itur HaOz for valor on an operation near Khan Younis in which, as happened later when he was killed, he had been wounded but continued to fight until the mission had been completed.

Stempel built our brigade. He put it together, no one else. He had a chest like a bull and wrists as big around as most men’s arms.

When we had pinned the flag of Israel to the grillwork above the Wall, our little group stood and sang the national anthem. A photographer, Eli Landau, was recording the historic moment with his camera. Stempel tugged my body between himself and the lens. He hid his face so that no film could be made of his tears.

Stempel held my arm in a grip of iron. Twice he tried to speak and twice his voice failed. He pulled me so close that the brows of our helmets were touching.

“Zamosh!” Stempel said, with such emotion that I can hear the words still, though he spoke them almost fifty years ago. “Zamosh, if my grandfather, if my great-grandfather, if any of my family who have been murdered in pogroms and in the death camps . . . if they could know, somehow, even for one second, that I, their grandson, would be standing here at this hour, in this place, wearing the red boots of an Israeli paratrooper . . . if they could know this, Zamosh, for just one instant, they would suffer death a thousand times and count it as nothing.”

Stempel gripped my arm as if he would never let go.

“We shall never, never leave this place,” he said. “Never will we give this up. Never.”

Republished with permission from "The Lion's Gate: On the Front Lines of the Six Day War" by Steven Pressfield with permission of Sentinel, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © Nine Sisters Imports, Inc.  2014.

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