Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania, the scene of the largest conflict ever fought in the Western Hemisphere, is considered by many to be the final turning point of the Civil War.  For three days, the brave armies of the North and South fought against each other, each equally strong in their beliefs, and each reluctant to [...]

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Alacatraz prison, officially closed in 1963, sits on an island of 22 acres, surrounded by freezing waters and rapid currents.  Juan Manuel de Ayala, who gave it the name of La Isla de las Alcatreces, “the Island of the Pelicans,” discovered the island in 1775.  In 1850, Alcatraz, better known as “the Rock,” was established [...]

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The states along the Gulf Coast of the U.S. have a reason to fear the onset of hurricane season and the inevitable disasters that occur. Storm warnings had been issued from Florida to Louisiana and yet, many thought this would be just another hurricane. On August 29, 2005 Katrina came ashore, bringing a storm surge [...]

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It was a cruel event that made Hiroshima the tourist attraction that it is today. The United States War Department, in accordance with the Manhattan Project, issued the final order for the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan on July 25th, 1945.  On August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m., the first atomic bomb in the world, flown [...]

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Grief tourism occurs every day in places like Pearl Harbor (battlefield tourism) and Auschwitz (Holocaust tourism). Then there are people who visit places wrecked by natural disasters, people who attend funerals of celebrities, and people who visit prisons. In short there are many types of grief tourism and here we’ve tried to organize tourist attractions based [...]

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Auschwitz, in the suburbs of Oswiecim, Poland, was a complex of three concentration camps, Auschwitz I for death, II for slave labor, and III for transport.  It was the scene of one of the world’s greatest tragedies, the mass genocide of over one million Poles, European Jews, and Roma people (the gypsies) in the darkest [...]

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On the morning of December 26, 2004, Phuket, the largest island of Thailand, felt the first shock of the 9.0 earthquake that brought the “Andaman Wave” to the shores of the Andaman Sea on the Indian Ocean coastline.  Hotels along the waterfront were filled with tourists on vacation for the Christmas holidays, unaware of what [...]

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The Anne Frank Museum officially opened in 1960 to visitors from around the world, the curious, the incredulous, and the sorrowful.  In early 1942, Otto Frank and Herman Van Pels began preparing their office building in a nondescript old part of Amsterdam in the hopes of avoiding detection and capture by the German Nazis.  Their [...]

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The U.S.S. Arizona Memorial is dedicated to the 1,177 lives that were lost in the early morning hours on December 7, 194l, when the Japanese launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.  The replica of the Arizona reflects the initial, unforgettable defeat, the sad decline of the war, and the rising strength and final victory [...]

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