The 900-day Siege of Leningrad This was undoubtedly the most tragic period in the history of the city, a period full of suffering and heroism. For everyone who lives in St. Petersburg the Blokada (the Siege) of Leningrad is an important part of the city’s heritage and a painful memory for the population’s older generations. Less than two and a half months after the Soviet Union was attacked by Nazi Germany, German troops were already approaching Leningrad. The Red Army was outflanked and on September 8 1941 the Germans had fully encircled Leningrad and the siege began. The siege lasted for a total of 900 days, from September 8 1941…

March 26, 2011 By SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE London A REVOLUTION resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy. And though every revolution is different, because all revolutions are local, in this uncertain age of Arab uprisings and Western interventions, as American missiles bombard a defiant Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya, as the ruler of Yemen totters on the brink and Syrian troops fire on protesters, the history of revolution can still offer us some clues to the future. The German sociologist Max Weber cited three reasons for citizens to obey…

(CBS/AP) Last Updated 1:25 p.m. ET BOSTON – Geraldine Ferraro, the former New York Representative who became the first woman to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, has died. She was 75. Ferraro suffered complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for twelve years. She passed away just before 10 a.m. Saturday morning at Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by her family, said Amanda Fuchs Miller, a friend acting as a spokeswoman for the family. Ferraro was the first woman to run for U.S. vice president on a major party ticket, when the obscure New York City congresswoman was catapulted to national prominence at the 1984…

  A piece of the preserved Heslington brain after it was removed from the skull in which it was found. CREDIT: York Archaeological Trust  A 2,500-year-old human skull uncovered in England was less of a surprise than what was in it: the brain. The discovery of the yellowish, crinkly, shrunken brain prompted questions about how such a fragile organ could have survived so long and how frequently this strange type of preservation occurs. Except for the brain, all of the skull’s soft tissue was gone when the skull was pulled from a muddy Iron Age pit where the University of York was planning to expand its Heslington East campus. [Britain’s…