Hitler sent messages to London today in an effort to prolong negotiations regarding Poland, Hitler’s current target for territorial concessions in Europe.

While the content of those messages has not been revealed, Germany’s recent troop mobilizations have slowed, buoying optimism that war may be avoided.

Rumors swirl that there may soon be a multinational peace conference to settle the Polish question, raising hopes that a broader peace between Britain and Germany, addressing a broad range of issues, could follow.

Nevertheless, curators at London’s National Gallery have removed art masterpieces from the museum’s walls and transferred them out of the city for safekeeping.

Bomb-proof shelters reinforced with sandbags have been installed at sentry stations for Buckingham Palace guards.

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Some pictures stick with you.

These are the ones from last week which have stuck with me.

The general store which served as the Post Office in Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, in the late 1800s.

Captain Felix, the head of the French military aviation school, was likely a hero during World War I, but I must confess that his picture, taken in 1910, reminded me of Snidley Whiplash from the “Rocky and Bullwinkle” cartoon show.

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An armored column of Patton’s Third Army has punched through the current battle lines in central France and is within 155 miles of the German border.

Three more columns of the Third Army are spread out around Paris, eliminating the German defenses around the city.

A third Allied amphibious landing in France has begun in Bordeaux.

As the Allied fronts in the north and south of France move closer together, 500,000 French resistance fighters have liberated fifty thousand square miles of the French interior.

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To the stilted pictorial history of the Civil War — the stiff studio portraits of men in uniform, the stylized woodblock engravings of the era’s weekly news magazines, the grainy after-battle photos of the dead in the fields and romanticized oil paintings of battles never seen by their artists — we can add these:

A collection of 137 drawings and watercolors made in the moment by an immigrant soldier in the field as the Civil War unfolded around him.

The clash of combat brigades, the rushing and falling of men and horses, the fear and boredom and comedy of encampments…

They are all here, in Adolph Metzner’s artworks.

“What was it like?”

Adolph answers the question with surprising images of unvarnished honesty.

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A box canyon is a type of canyon characterized by steep, nearly vertical walls on three sides, with access and egress only through the "mouth" of the canyon.

Among the more famous box canyons is the one in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, near San Diego.

In 1847, American soldiers used hand tools to widen a trail to permit passage by covered wagons.

This widened trail became the first road into Southern California.

An exhausted mother sells handmade cigars displayed in a cigar box on Lower Broadway, 1911.

This is what ‘no safety net’ looks like.

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Some pictures stick with you.

These are the ones from last week which have stuck with me.

A Confederate soldier makes flapjacks in camp during the American Civil War.

The volcano on Krakatoa Island, in Indonesia, erupted on August 27, 1883, producing the loudest sound in history.

The big boom was heard three thousand miles away.

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Seven waves of British, American and French troops have landed on the shores of the Riviera, from Marseilles to Nice, in an amphibious assault which covered 125 miles of beachhead.

Nine thousand British and American paratroopers, along with airdrops of supplies, dropped inland, encountering little enemy opposition.

Among the airdropped items were pamphlets of instructions for French resistance fighters and French civilians.

The operation’s immediate objective is the capture of German-occupied Lyon, a steppingstone to the ultimate goal of joining the Allied forces now fighting in France’s northwest.

German prisoners taken in the amphibious assault are said to be demoralized, recognizing that the end of the Third Reich is near.

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It’s a type of grass which is native to North America and has been grown here for thousands of years.

There are two hundred varieties of corn and it comes in many0 colors.

Columbus carried the plant back to Europe in 1493.

And the plant soon spread to the rest of the world because it could be grown in a variety of climates.

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Col. George Boardman Boomer was a Federal brigade commander who was killed in May 1863 while leading his men in an uphill assault against entrenched Confederate forces in Vicksburg during the American Civil War.

He was hailed as a heroic military leader and a memorial describing his actions stands in the Vicksburg National Military Park.

French immigrant Louis Dupuy opened the luxurious Hotel de Paris in Georgetown, Colorado, in 1875, during the region’s silver boom.

The hotel was famous for its authentic French cuisine and flourished, along with the local economy, until the financial panic of 1893.

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Lumbermen in Wisconsin, c. 1880.

Scandinavian immigrants flocked to the Upper Midwest in the mid-1800s, recognizing a land similar to their own where their lumbering skills could generate income.

Often, an uncle or older brother’s initial success in America would serve as a magnet for younger members of an extended family.

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