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A Taste of Resilience: The Story of Budae Jjigae
75 years ago, on June 25th, 1950, the Korean War began. The fighting between the northern Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the southern Republic of Korea raged on for 3 years. During the devastation and food shortages that followed, Koreans created a dish that would come to symbolize resilience and creativity: budae jjigae. This popular dish represents the exact idea of Politics for Dinner: finding common ground in conflict. Because of my own Korean roots, I want to take a closer look at this dish to see how it tells a story of Korean culture. Often considered the first proxy war of the Cold War era, there was a…
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On this day – June 12th, 1987
On June 12th, 1987, Ronald Reagan delivered one of his most famous speeches while visiting West Berlin, Germany. At the height of the Cold War period, with the Berlin Wall in the background of his speech, Reagan called to Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev, imploring him to tear down the wall. The speech continued to further call for arms reductions and advocate for the easing of Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. Just around two years after Reagan delivered this famous speech, the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed.
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Operation Cactus: How India Thwarted the 1988 Coup in the Maldives
A small island nation facing the threat of a coup: how would they respond? This is the story of the 1988 Coup in the Maldives and of Operation Cactus, the response that ensued. Before I begin, let us first look into a short history of the Maldives, and how they arrived in this situation. The Maldives, or the Republic of Maldives is located off the coast of India, and is the smallest country in Asia. For centuries, the nation was ruled by ancient dynasties in its capital Malé. In 1887, the Maldives became a British protectorate, a status it maintained until gaining its independence in 1965. Two years later,…
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On this day in history – May, 20th , 1862
On this day, May 20, 1862, the Homestead Act was signed into action by President Abraham Lincoln. This act worked to foster settlers to move west of the Mississippi River by giving American citizens 160 acres of land if they were willing to pay a small fee and work on the land to improve it. The act opened up a large amount of American land for ownership, leading to about 10 percent of the total land mass of the United States to be privatized by 1934.
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On this day in history – May 12th, 1949
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On this day in history – May 12th, 1949
On May 12th, 1949, the Soviet Union lifted its blockade against West Berlin. Since March 1948, the Soviet Union had blocked the Allies’ road, railway, and water access to the Western sectors of Berlin. Throughout this 11-month period, the United States and British planes had been airlifting supplies to West Berlin and had also been staging a counter-blockade against East Berlin. The success of the US-British airlift and the counter-blockade forced the Soviet Union to abandon the blockade, allowing British and American forces to enter West Germany.
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On this day in history – May, 20th , 1862
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Currywurst Shakshouka with Labneh swirl
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Politics For Dinner (@politicsfordinner)
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Terror at the Games: The 1972 Munich Hostage Crisis
Recently, I watched the Oscar-nominated film September 5, which drew my attention to the brutal hostage crisis that unfolded at the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, an event I had previously known little about. The movie’s dramatic portrayal of the ABC News coverage of the hostage crisis and how it progressed throughout the 24-hour period compelled me to learn more about what happened on this dark day in history. The 1972 summer was the first return of this event to Germany since the 1936 Olympic Games, which had been hosted in Berlin by Adolf Hitler. In an effort to wash over the memory of Hitler’s Olympic Games, the organizing committee of…
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Tilapia and Kachumbari Salad!
Inspired by my article about a disputed lake in Africa, I created this dish using Malawian and Tanzanian ingredients as inspiration. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Politics For Dinner (@politicsfordinner)
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The Football War
A World Cup qualifying match turned into an international crisis. This bloody, four-day conflict between the nations of Honduras and El Salvador has gone down in history as the Football War, or in other areas of the world, the Soccer War. But what correlation did the soccer match and the conflict really have? This is the story of the 100-hour war between two neighboring nations. To understand the beginning of this conflict, some necessary demographic issues must be discussed. Honduras and El Salvador are neighboring nations in Latin America. In 1969, when the Football War broke out, the population of El Salvador was around 3 million people, while the population…
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On this day in history – February 24th, 1917
On this day, February 24th, 1917, the United Kingdom first showed an encoded telegram, written by the German Foreign Secretary, to the United States. This telegram that the British had intercepted, now infamously known as the Zimmerman Telegram, contained details proposing an alliance between Mexico and Germany, against the United States and its possible entry into the war. In the telegram, the Germans offered Mexico some territory in the United States in exchange for the alliance and support. This telegram, once released to the public, was one of the ultimate push factors in shifting public opinion in America toward entering World War I.
