1 . TOKYO-Japan marked the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing in its western city of Hiroshima (广岛) on August 6th amid growing calls for Tokyo to reflect on crimes the Japanese army committed during World War II. At a memorial ceremony held at the Peace Memorial Park, Hiroshima Mayor Kazumi Matsui delivered the Peace Declaration,urging world leaders to stop believing in the theory that nuclear weapons can prevent war.

“They must immediately take concrete steps to lead us from the dangerous present toward our ideal world,” said Matsui, who also urged policymakers to “move toward a security system based on trust through dialogue in pursuit of civil society ideals”. “Mistrust and division are on the rise,” warned United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in his message readout at the ceremony.

A moment of silence was observed at 8:15 am local time, the exact moment when an atomic bomb dropped from a US bomber and exploded over the city on Aug.6, 1945, killing around 140,000 people by the end of that year.

At the event which about 50,000 people attended, Matsui placed in a monument a list of the names of 339,227 victims, including 5,320 deaths confirmed last year. “Japan must immediately sign the Treaty (条约) on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” Matsui noted in the Peace Declaration, further urging the government to heed the wishes of survivors from the bombing and the peace-loving Japanese people.

The number of survivors of the two atomic bombings including Nagasaki with an average age of over 85, has dropped by 5,346 from a year earlier to 113,649 as of March, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spoke at the ceremony, saying an atomic bomb made more than 100,000 lose their lives without mentioning whether Japan would sign the treaty, let alone (更不用说) the historical background of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The prime minister was criticized for hosting the Group of Seven leaders' summit in Hiroshima in May.

While Japan inwardly looks at the tragedies it experienced at the end of WWII, historians and political minds of the international community have encouraged Japan to come to see itself not only as a victim of the atomic bombings but also as the criminal (罪犯) who was involved in these tragic incidents in the first place.

2 . February 13, 2022, marked the 25th anniversary (纪念日) of the Great LEGO Spill — the worst toy-related environmental disaster of all time. On this important day in 1997, the Tokio Express was hit by a huge, 28-foot high wave off the United Kingdom’s southwestern coast, tilting the ship by 60 degrees and causing it to drop 62 containers into the sea. One was filled with about 5 million colorful LEGO bricks!

Shortly after the incident, LECO pieces began washing ashore the beautiful beaches of Cornwall and Devon in southwest England. Many locals rushed to hunt for the toys. Cornwall resident Tracey Williams was among the thousands of locals that searched the beaches regularly to find the little sea-themed pieces.

In 2010 Williams moved to Cornwall and came across some LEGO pieces on her first trip to the beach. Wondering where else they had been found, she created a Facebook group. Called “Lego Lost at Sea”, it allowed her and hundreds of other collectors to share their discoveries. As it turned out, the LEGO bricks were not just washing ashore English beaches. They had also been found in Wales, Ireland, the Channel Islands, France, Belgium, and Holland, showing just how far ocean currents had carried them.

“What we’re finding now are the pieces that sank as well as the pieces that floated,” Williams says. “It’s providing us with an insight into what happens to plastic in the ocean, how far it drifts (漂移) — both on the surface of the ocean and also along the seabed—and what happens to it as it breaks down.”

No one knows when the LEGO bricks will stop appearing on the beaches. But one thing is for sure, that is, the plastic pieces will be around for centuries. A 2020 study analyzing the structure of the washed-up LEGO bricks concluded that the five million pieces could take as long as 1,300 years to degrade (降解) completely. And like all plastic products, the iconic toys will never entirely disappear. Instead, they will break down into tiny “microplastics” and be eaten by ocean animals. They will make their way up the food chain to humans.