Shortly after 11 a.m. on December 1, 1990, 132 feet below the English Channel, workers drill an opening the size of a car through a wall of rock. This was no ordinary hole–it connected the two ends of an underwater tunnel linking Great Britain with the European mainland for the first time in more than 8,000 years.
The Channel Tunnel, or “Chunnel,” was not a new idea. It had been suggested to Napoleon Bonaparte, in fact, as early as 1802. It wasn’t...
Rabu, 30 November 2016
Daily Quiz for December 1, 2016
This actor was the first to be paid $1 million dollars for a single movie role.
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The Meeting from Hell: Conspiracy
YOU KNOW THE meeting—management convened it to present some new undertaking and solicit every body’s input. That is what neophytes believe, anyway; the more experienced know the score, and enter the conference room resigned, wary, even disposed to revolt. But the boss has clout enough to cram his agenda down everyone’s throats. Such cramming occurs …
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Book Review: The Devils’ Alliance- Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941
The Devils’ Alliance: Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939–1941 By Roger Moorhouse. Basic Books, 2014. 382 pp. $29.99. It’s easy to argue with Roger Moor- house’s contention that historians have ignored the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. “Except in Poland and the Baltic states,” he writes, “the pact is simply not part of our collective narrative of …
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Aftermath: The Doolittle Raid
The Doolittle attack generated more, and more violent, ripples than once thought. Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle, at the controls of a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber, zoomed low over northern Tokyo at midday on Saturday, April 18, 1942. He could see the high-rises crowding the Japanese capital’s business district as well as the imperial palace and …
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Willie and Joe Come Home
Bill Mauldin’s legendary dogfaces kept faith with returning veterans of every generation. Wars never really end for veterans., Those who make it home return to a world they do not recognize, and that does not recognize them. So it was for Willie and Joe, World War II’s most famous fictional GIs. Creations of Pulitzer Prize-winning …
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The Crowded Hour
Ambitions and agendas collide in the rush to Germany’s unconditional surrender. In late April 1945, the world was on edge. And in a single 24-hour period, April 29–30, two momentous pieces of news broke. From a conference in San Francisco, the Associated Press posted a story that the Germans had surrendered unconditionally. And news sources …
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Death in the West
With Europe’s liberation in sight, American armies fought brilliantly in the Ruhr Pocket. History little notes the final great confrontation in the West European theater, and not without reason. When supercharged American armies were encircling and—in an ironic echo of the Blitzkrieg—crushing the last Wehrmacht force there, Germany was scant weeks from unconditional surrender. Amid …
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Time Travel: House of Games
Bletchley Park is one of the world’s great survivors. The mansion, 50 miles north west of London and dating to the late 1870s, was almost lost to the British nation twice. In 1938 a local builder was eyeing the parcel as a development site when the government stepped in, buying the property from the Leon …
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Fire for Effect: The Price of Peace
We’ve all heard that campus address declaring that graduation does not mark a conclusion, but a beginning. V-E Day was like that. We usually think of victory in World War II as an end: the final defeat of Adolf Hitler and minions, the crushing of Nazi ambitions for world domination, Europe unchained. Historians like to …
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Chasing History Under Water: Conversation with Joseph Hoyt
JOSEPH HOYT’S boyhood dives on ship- wrecks in Lake Erie with his dad led him to degrees in maritime history and marine archaeology and then to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA’s Office of National Marine Sanctuaries manages wreck sites such as the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, whose turret Hoyt helped recover, and …
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Reading List: Stephen G. Fritz
Neglected for years by Americans in favor of Normandy, the bulge, and the victorious march into Germany, the eastern front lately has seen a surge of interest as the pivot of World War ii. “If nothing else, the sheer numbers, the size and sweep of the battles, the enormity of the suffering, and the clash …
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Letters from Readers – June 2015 World War II
Buying Time for Britain I’m glad to see from Robert M. Citino’s article (“Sympathy for the Neville,” January/February 2015) that I’m not the only one who appreciates Neville Chamberlain’s “appeasement” at Munich in September 1938; that was the only action he could have taken. When he spoke of “peace for our time” he was aware …
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Selasa, 29 November 2016
November 30, 1886: Folies Bergere stage first revue
Once a hall for operettas, pantomime, political meetings, and vaudeville, the Folies Bergère in Paris introduces an elaborate revue featuring women in sensational costumes. The highly popular “Place aux Jeunes” established the Folies as the premier nightspot in Paris. In the 1890s, the Folies followed the Parisian taste for striptease and quickly gained a reputation for its spectacular nude shows. The theater spared no expense, staging revues that...
Daily Quiz for November 30, 2016
In 1807 Aaron Burr, former Vice President of the US, was found not guilty of this charge.
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Audio: WWII Vet Recalls How The USS Northampton Was Struck By Two Torpedoes
Earnest M. Phillips, a World War II veteran, recounts the events of the sinking of the USS Northampton after being struck by torpedoes.
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Death of an Escort Carrier
For the handful of seamen who survived, the sinking of USS Liscome Bay was an experience that would :» haunt them for years to come. “Here comes a torpedo!” Spotting a white wake streaking toward his ship, a lookout aboard the U.S. Navy escort aircraft carrier Liscome Bay called out the alarm in the early …
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Ukrainian’s Fight for France
Rather than serve as instruments of the Waffen–SS’ s brutal partisan war in eastern France, two Ukrainian battalions went over to the French Resistance. A long-forgotten battle in northeastern France gives ample credence to the cliche “ truth is stranger than fiction.” During the summer of 1944, in little more than 100 days, two battalions …
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Black Tuesday
The fate of the embattled paratroopers at Arnhem Bridge rested with the men of the South Staffords. The time was 0430 on September 19, 1944. The men of D Company of the 2nd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment, lurked in the early morning shadows and nervously awaited the word to lead the advance into Arnhem, Holland, …
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Senin, 28 November 2016
November 29, 1947: U.N. votes for partition of Palestine
Despite strong Arab opposition, the United Nations votes for the partition of Palestine and the creation of an independent Jewish state.
The modern conflict between Jews and Arabs in Palestine dates back to the 1910s, when both groups laid claim to the British-controlled territory. The Jews were Zionists, recent emigrants from Europe and Russia who came to the ancient homeland of the Jews to establish a Jewish national state. The native Palestinian...
Daily Quiz for November 29, 2016
The German V-1 flying bomb was designed under this code name.
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Minggu, 27 November 2016
November 28, 1520: Magellan reaches the Pacific
After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, becoming the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic.
On September 20, 1519, Magellan set sail from Spain in an effort to find a western sea route to the rich Spice Islands of Indonesia. In command of five ships and 270 men, Magellan sailed to West Africa...
Daily Quiz for November 28, 2016
This literary character, created in 1912, has a city in California named for him.
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Audio: This Is Why The Wine Industry In New Jersey Was Unsuccessful Years After Prohibition
Tom Cosentino explains the history of New Jersey wine-making and why the industry suffered following the prohibition.
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Sabtu, 26 November 2016
November 27, 1095: Pope Urban II orders first Crusade
On November 27, 1095, Pope Urban II makes perhaps the most influential speech of the Middle Ages, giving rise to the Crusades by calling all Christians in Europe to war against Muslims in order to reclaim the Holy Land, with a cry of “Deus vult!” or “God wills it!”
Born Odo of Lagery in 1042, Urban was a protege of the great reformer Pope Gregory VII. Like Gregory, he made internal reform his main focus, railing against simony (the selling of church...
Daily Quiz for November 27, 2016
This number of people were executed for witchcraft during the Salem Witch Trials.
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Jumat, 25 November 2016
November 26, 1941: FDR establishes modern Thanksgiving holiday
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.
The tradition of celebrating the holiday on Thursday dates back to the early history of the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, when post-harvest holidays were celebrated on the weekday regularly set aside as “Lecture Day,” a midweek church meeting where topical sermons were presented. A famous Thanksgiving observance occurred...
Daily Quiz for November 26, 2016
On June 7, 1863 troops from this county captured Mexico City.
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Daily Quiz for November 25, 2016
The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the non-Christian world between Spain and this country.
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Kamis, 24 November 2016
November 25, 1952: Mousetrap opens in London
“The Mousetrap,” a murder-mystery written by the novelist and playwright Agatha Christie, opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. The crowd-pleasing whodunit would go on to become the longest continuously running play in history, with more than 10 million people to date attending its more than 20,000 performances in London’s West End.
When “The Mousetrap” premiered in 1952, Winston Churchill was British prime minister, Joseph Stalin was Soviet...
Rabu, 23 November 2016
November 24, 1859: Origin of Species is published
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin’s theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called “natural selection.” In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing...
Daily Quiz for November 24, 2016
This was the official code-name for the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings in Normandy.
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Against All Possible Fire
A teenage squad leader in Company F, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, took part in the brutal battle to wrest Nijmegen’s Hunner Park from its fanatical SS defenders. Spencer F.Wurst is one of a handful of men who can lay claim to the distinction of having made three of the four combat jumps …
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A General for the “Tough Hombres”
A FULL 59 OF THE 164 members of the U.S. Military Academy’s class of 1915 became general officers, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, Omar N. Bradley and James Alward Van Fleet. But on June 6, 1944— while Eisenhower and Bradley were leading the D-Day invasion— -Van Fleet was nowhere on the radar screen for promotion to …
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One Man’s War: Gordon Lee Mallonee
NAME: Gordon Lee Mallonee DATE SHIPPED OUT: August 17, 1944 CAMPAIGN: South Pacific Editor’s note: While aboard USS Leon, Lieutenant Gordon Lee Mallonee wrote to his mother and father about his first major engagement: Operation Stalemate II, the U.S. invasion of the Palau Islands. September 18, 1944 I left San Francisco, California, on August 17, …
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Gehlen: Shadowy Scourge of the East
REINHARD GEHLEN WAS just a schoolboy when he and his mother attended a small political rally in their hometown of Breslau. The theater in which the meeting was being held was suddenly attacked by a mob of screaming Communists. The mother and child managed to escape, but the impressionable young Gehlen was left with a …
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Command: Italy’s Far Eastern Army and Navy Forces
DESIGNATION: Italy’s Far Eastern Army and Navy Forces OPERATIONAL: From 1901 ITALY’S SURRENDER TO the Allies in September 1943 led to open hostilities between its Far Eastern forces and the Imperial Japanese Army. The Italians had maintained a presence in the Far East from 1901, following the conclusion of the Boxer Rebellion, when— along with …
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Letters to World War II September 2004
A UNIQUE MEMENTO FROM THE LONGEST DAY The article in the June issue about Pharmacist’s Mate Roger Shoemaker’s D-Day experiences, “ Lasting Impressions of the Longest Day,” brought back many memories of my own D-Day experiences on USS Bates.The “ official despatch” (above) was read to the crews of Destroyer Escort 68 after leaving Plymouth …
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World War II September 2004 Editorial
SEVERAL YEARS AGO during my first visit to Holland to see the battlefields of Operation Market-Garden, I found myself watching a most unusual parade. It was September, and I was there to study the attempt by the Allies to put Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery’s “ single thrust” strategy to the test and seize a …
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Book Review: Flyboys- A True Story of Courage
Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James Bradley Little, Brown and Company, Boston, New York and London, 2003, $25.95. CHICHI JIMA, A SMALL volcanic island near Iwo Jima, is unknown to the American public and little noted in history. Yet events took place on that tiny speck of rock during World War II that …
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Book Review: FDR in 1944- A Diminished President
FDR in 1944: A Diminished President by Matthew B. Wills Ivy House Publishing Group, Raleigh, N.C., 2003, $22.95. “WHY, I SAW FRANKLIN Roosevelt when he was running in 1944, and he had one foot in the grave!” growled a banker of my acquaintance some years ago. I wrote it off to his rock-ribbed Republicanism, but …
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Book Review: Tank Driver
Tank Driver: With the 11th Armored From the Battle of the Bulge to VE Day by J. Ted Hartman Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Ind., 2003, $24.95. Tank Rider: Into the Reich With the Red Army by Evgeni Bessonov Stackpole Books, Mechanicsbuig;, Pa,, 2003, $34.95. “DON‘T YOU BOYS worry none,” says the tank commander in a …
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February 2017 Table of Contents
The February 2017 issue features a cover story about legendary frontiersman and Alamo defender David Crockett
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Undercover: The Swiss Conspiracy
DESPITE SWITZERLAND’S official policy of neutrality, with absolutely no interference from inside or outside its borders, the Swiss government secretly encouraged its bankers to solve practically all of Adolf Hitler’ s gigantic financial problems. In addition, its engineers were urged to surreptitiously furnish the Nazis with nearly unlimited quantities of highly sophisticated war materiel and …
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February 2017 Readers’ Letters
In the February 2017 issue of Wild West readers share dispatches about boom-to-bust Tin Cup, Colorado, and Adelia Earp's dubious memoir
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The Kid and the McCarty Name
What does an 1872 personal ad from a New York newspaper have to do with Billy the Kid? Perhaps plenty
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Book Review: Powder River
Paul Hedren's new book is the compelling tale of textbook Army preparation and execution undone by circumstances in the field
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Movie Review: The Magnificent Seven
This remake of the 1960 classic plods toward the climactic battle with more gunplay but far less character development
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Book Review: The Trial of Tom Horn
Idolized by many contemporaries, Horn was undeniably a braggart, a sociopath and, by his own admission, an experienced killer of men
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Book Review: Frederic Remington
This fine art tome presents hundreds of Remington's flat works and a scholarly analysis of the legendary artist’s career
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Book Review: Texas Ranger
Texas Ranger Frank Hamer accomplished far more than just nabbing notorious outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow
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Missouri River Epic
Missouri River trapper and trader Charles Larpenteur left a harrowing memoir of the hardscrabble frontier fur trade
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Behind the Lines: Antwerp, 1914
Britain goes to war—but where? WHOEVER CONTROLLED THE ENGLISH CHANNEL and whoever controlled the Channel threatened the maritime perimeter of the British Isles. That was the center of gravity in the United Kingdom’s national security strategy during the era when capital warships were the world’s ultimate global-weapons system. Yet ships of the line, and later …
The post Behind the Lines:...
Author-Historian T.J. Stiles
The Minnesotan’s latest book has garnered impressive accolades, including the Pulitzer Prize for history—the author’s second Pulitzer
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Don Prechtel
The Oregonian artist has rendered historically faithful Western paintings since the 1960s
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Letter From Wild West – February 2017
The other Tennessee Mounted Volunteers all died with David Crockett at the Alamo, but would they have begrudged him his fame?
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Selasa, 22 November 2016
November 23, 1936: First issue of Life is published
On November 23, 1936, the first issue of the pictorial magazine Life is published, featuring a cover photo of the Fort Peck Dam by Margaret Bourke-White.
Life actually had its start earlier in the 20th century as a different kind of magazine: a weekly humor publication, not unlike today’s The New Yorker in its use of tart cartoons, humorous pieces and cultural reporting. When the original Life folded during the Great Depression, the influential American...
Audio: WWII Vet- ‘We Mowed Them, We Massacred Them’
Gustav Enyedy Jr., a veteran of World War II, describes his orders and the horrors he witnessed when shooting down Nazis.
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Daily Quiz for November 23, 2016
In August 1920, this category was added to the livestock judging competitions at the Kansas State Fair.
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Close Call for French Children at Elbeuf
MY PRINCETON ROTC program and the courses I took later at Officer Candidate School did a good job of preparing me for most of my combat experiences as an artillery forward observer during World War II. What I never imagined was that at times I would be fighting a war in the midst of civilians …
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Top Gun of the CBI
John Alison saw service on more fronts than most of his contemporaries before his transfer to the China-Burma-India Theater, where he earned a reputation as one of the best pure pilots in the Army Air Forces. Desperately searching for fighter planes to stock his American Volunteer Group (AVG), later dubbed the “ Flying Tigers,” in …
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Operation Goodwood
Frustrated by weeks of failed attempts to break the deadlock around the British invasion beaches and move inland, Field Marshal Bernard F. Montgomery seized upon the idea of launching a massive armored onslaught that would capture Caen and end the stalemate in Normandy. A burst from a titanic bomb flung the colossal 62-ton Tiger …
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Forgotten Battles of the Great Patriotic War
The Soviet-German war was the fiercest, most brutal and most costly chapter in World War II. Since this conflict ended with the destruction of both Germany’s Wehrmacht and Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, it was also the war’s most decisive theater. It is unfortunate, therefore, that until very recently— for largely political, ideological and military reasons— …
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Henry L. Stimson: The Ever-Present Presence
Key decisions involving the United States’ role in World War II, from the nonrecognition of Japan’s Manchurian conquest in 1931 to the bombing of the Hiroshima in 1945, were influenced by Henry L. Stimson. As President Herbert Hoover’s secretary of state, he created the main obstacle in Japanese-American relations before World War II, the Stimson …
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Armament: Homegrown Fighters Defend Belgrade
BELGRADE AWOKE TO AIR RAID sirens on the early morning of Sunday, April 6, 1941. At 6:50 the first German bombers flew over the capital city of Yugoslavia and began dropping their bombs to signal the start of Operation Strafgericht (“ Punishment” ). The attack’s purpose was to pave the way for the German invasion …
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Commands- Bluie West One Airfield
DESIGNATION: Bluie West One Airfield OPERATIONAL: January 1942 CAMPAIGN: Atlantic ON JUNE 19, 1941, SIX MONTHS before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, a small naval convoy consisting of the troop transport USS Mimargo (AP-20) and three other ships made its way out of New York Harbor to carry out one of the U.S. Army’s …
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One Man’s War- John Fuchs
NAME: John H. Fuchs DATE ENTERED SERVICE: May 5, 1943 CAMPAIGNS: Central Europe DECORATIONS: Purple Heart, POW Medal, Good Conduct Medal, American Campaign Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Service Medal, World War II Victory Medal JOHN FUCHS ENTERED THE U S. Army Air Forces in May 1943, completing basic training at Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls, Texas, …
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July 2004 Readers’ Letters
Glider Riders/ Lucky Day I enjoyed reading “ A Gliderman Across the Rhine,” by Frank J. O’Rourke in the April 2004 issue. Reviewing the photos in the article, one caught my eye. It is the picture on page 47 (below) where the glider is standing right up on its nose. The caption states that it …
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Letter from WWII- July 2004
AUGUST 1944 WAS a time of great elation for the Western Allies. After some particularly brutal battles around Caen and St. Lo, by the end of July the Allies had regained the momentum in their Normandy campaign. Lieutenant General George S. Patton’s Third U.S. Army was soon driving hard through Brittany. The Operation Anvil landings …
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The Legend of Richard Garnett
Many people who are familiar with the movie Gettysburg will probably recognize the name Richard Garnett. Garnett was depicted as a tragic figure in the movie, someone who appeared to have his honor to defend and, despite being sick and lame at the time of the battle (depicted in the movie) he went ahead and …
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A Review of Pickett’s Charge – A New Look at Gettysburg’s Final Attack
Phillip Thomas Tucker’s most recent book Pickett’s Charge – A New Look at Gettysburg’s Final Attack offers a vastly (and intriguingly) different spin on your average assessment of the presumed futility of the attack Robert E. Lee ordered on the final day at Gettysburg. The traditional view of Pickett’s Charge is that it was doomed …
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Senin, 21 November 2016
November 22, 1963: John F. Kennedy assassinated
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible.
First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her husband on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas on November 22. Sitting in a Lincoln convertible, the Kennedys and Connallys...
Daily Quiz for November 22, 2016
The classic 1956 science-fiction movie, Forbidden Planet, was based on this Shakespeare play.
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Did Bill Longley Really Kill 32 Men?
Did Bill Longley Really Kill 32 Men?
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Minggu, 20 November 2016
November 21, 1980: Millions tune in to find out who shot J.R.
On this day in 1980, 350 million people around the world tune in to television’s popular primetime drama “Dallas” to find out who shot J.R. Ewing, the character fans loved to hate. J.R. had been shot on the season-ending episode the previous March 21, which now stands as one of television’s most famous cliffhangers. The plot twist inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering “Who shot J.R.?” for the next eight months. The November...
Audio: Shot Down- WWII Airman Forced To Bail Out During Bombing Run
World War II veteran, Irwin Stovroff, recalls bailing out of his damaged aircraft during a bombing run to destroy bridges in France. Stovroff and his crew were later captured by Nazis and held prisoner.
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Daily Quiz for November 21, 2016
The 1879 trial of Ponca Chief Standing Bear versus General George Crook established this under American law.
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Sabtu, 19 November 2016
November 20, 1945: Nuremberg trials begin
Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II.
The Nuremberg Trials were conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war, to crimes against humanity. Lord Justice Geoffrey...
Daily Quiz for November 20, 2016
The first national cemetery in the United States is located in this city.
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Jumat, 18 November 2016
November 19, 1863: Lincoln delivers Gettysburg Address
On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In just 272 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War.
The Battle of Gettysburg, fought some four months earlier, was the single bloodiest battle of the Civil...
Daily Quiz for November 19, 2016
Florena Budwin is the first American woman to receive this honor.
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Kamis, 17 November 2016
November 18, 1991: Terry Waite released
Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon free Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite after more than four years of captivity. Waite, looking thinner and his hair grayer, was freed along with American educator Thomas M. Sutherland after intense negotiations by the United Nations.
Waite, special envoy of the archbishop of Canterbury, had secured the release of missionaries detained in Iran after the Islamic revolution. He also extracted British hostages from...
Daily Quiz for November 18, 2016
Joyce, William, and Rollie Hall, founders of Hallmark Cards, grew up in this small town also the childhood home of Johnny Carson.
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Martyr at the Berlin Wall
Peter Fechter made a run for freedom from East Berlin that cost him his life
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Edgar Degas in New Orleans: ‘Nothing But Cotton’
The first painting Edgar Degas sold to a museum did not portray underage ballerinas or a domestic tableau but the artist’s relatives at work in a cotton brokers’ office—in New Orleans, Louisiana. Until January 16, 2017, Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts has mounted a show, “Degas: A New Vision,” that includes A Cotton Office in …
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The Death of an American Marine
When Corregidor fell, Sergeant William Lynch’s tortured journey was only beginning
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George Washington: America’s Atlas
We stand on the shoulders of a giant
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Book Reviews: The Roosevelts’ Hidden Helpmates
Americans who loved Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt did so not only because the First Couple saw their country through depression and war but because they empathized with regular people. Alas, the Roosevelts had no empathy for one other. Kathryn Smith and Susan Quinn show that the Roosevelts stayed together after Eleanor’s 1918 discovery of her …
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Book Review: Bush by Jean Edward Smith
In this richly sourced volume offering much to admire but also much to view darkly, the biographer of presidents Eisenhower, Grant, and Franklin Roosevelt analyzes the American leader who dubbed himself “The Decider.” Jean Edward Smith renders George Walker Bush in three dimensions, thoroughly but almost always critically. To the author, his subject is a …
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Book Review: Kent State-Death and Dissent in the Long Sixties
img alt="How Many More?: Mary Ann Vecchio, a 14-year-old runaway, keens over the body of slain student Jeffrey Miller." class="attachment-small wp-post-image" height="577" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uQlXEp4EZtRp6oCYux5ni8_FZNyIGXbpz1whAT2WCdIYmNdXBSr1xYCAGrD452OVi4erzZEbrPvg=s0-d" style="margin-bottom:10px;" width="2000">Society comes off the hinges. Fear and hatred...
Interview with Ron Kovic
In January 1968, U.S. Marine Ron Kovic was fighting near My Loc, Republic of Vietnam, when an enemy bullet paralyzed him from the chest down. He became one of the war’s best-known opponents. In 1976, the Massapequa, New York, resident published a searing memoir, Born on the Fourth of July. A 1989 film adaptation earned …
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Rabu, 16 November 2016
November 17, 1558: Elizabethan Age begins
Queen Mary I, the monarch of England and Ireland since 1553, dies and is succeeded by her 25-year-old half-sister, Elizabeth.
The two half-sisters, both daughters of King Henry VIII, had a stormy relationship during Mary’s five-year reign. Mary, who was brought up as a Catholic, enacted pro-Catholic legislation and made efforts to restore the pope to supremacy in England. A Protestant rebellion ensued, and Queen Mary imprisoned Elizabeth, a Protestant,...
Daily Quiz for November 17, 2016
J. Sterling Morton, whose son, Joy, was the head of Morton Salt, founded this holiday.
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Deadly Strike on the Rex Cinema
As 1,100 Belgian citizens and Allied soldiers enjoyed a Saturday matinee, a blinding flash initiated the most devastating strike from a single air ordnance during the European Theater. The liberation of Antwerp by the Allies in September 1944 set off a joyous frenzy among its citizens. Crowds filled the streets to dance, drink, and lavish …
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Selasa, 15 November 2016
November 16, 1532: Pizarro traps Incan emperor Atahualpa
On November 16, 1532, Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. With fewer than 200 men against several thousand, Pizarro lures Atahualpa to a feast in the emperor’s honor and then opens fire on the unarmed Incans. Pizarro’s men massacre the Incans and capture Atahualpa, forcing him to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him.
Pizarro’s timing for conquest was perfect. By...
Audio: Independence Loyalty- How Patrick Henry Stood By George Washington
Thomas S Kidd, author of 'Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots' talks about a conspiracy to remove George Washington from his post as general of the Continental Army during the American Revolution.
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Daily Quiz for November 16, 2016
Reportedly, Abraham Lincoln once owned this famous screen prop.
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What We’re Reading: The Tunnels by Greg Mitchell
Today’s fraught world got you yearning for yesteryear? Read The Tunnels. Stuffed with main and supporting characters, plots and subplots and sub-subplots, along with multifarious intertwined threads of finagling and inveigling, Mitchell deftly navigates the mad months of 1961-62, when East Berlin was trying to wall off the West, Cuba was turning deep Red, John …
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Encounter: Made in Chicago
Novelist Nelson Algren woos Simone de Beauvoir
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Cameo: Missouri Medicine Man
A country doctor countered malaria with a drug once thought dubious
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All About That Troublesome Word
Some want to wipe the N-word from the face of the earth; others see a term of endearment—the complicated tale of two protean syllables
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Putting Pirates in Their Place
img alt="Captain Courageous: An 1878 painting by Dennis Carter Malone shows Captain Stephen Decatur Jr. struggling with a pirate in action just months after the burning of the captured Philadelphia." class="attachment-small wp-post-image" height="577" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vmhSNE5Hvf_vWbuteNNvvtmESmdZp-5FzCFwfhNgkhyCmBm3sBb25JZKL32xVq0BrtrbsdDGH9kw=s0-d" style="margin-bottom:10px;"...
Childe Hassam’s Island Escape
oday the highlight of Appledore Island, six miles off Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is sun- and wind-powered Shoals Marine Research Laboratory, jointly run by Cornell University and the University of New Hampshire. The painter Childe Hassam would barely recognize the island, a square mile of granite and basaltlike blocks overgrown by scrub, whose manmade environment …
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Under God: The Evolution of the Pledge of Allegiance
The Pledge of Allegiance and how it got that way
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Senin, 14 November 2016
November 15, 1867: First stock ticker debuts
On this day in 1867, the first stock ticker is unveiled in New York City. The advent of the ticker ultimately revolutionized the stock market by making up-to-the-minute prices available to investors around the country. Prior to this development, information from the New York Stock Exchange, which has been around since 1792, traveled by mail or messenger.
The ticker was the brainchild of Edward Calahan, who configured a telegraph machine to print...
Daily Quiz for November 15, 2016
Although it is housed in a modern building, this museum is considered the oldest in America.
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Tobacco Terror
img alt="On Guard: Anti-tobacco trust nightriders’ terrorism forced Kentucky Governor Augustus Willson to call out the State Guard to protect dissenting farmers." class="attachment-small wp-post-image" height="577" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_v2-zKDjgjGEIcrLk9VnH8RnQjEs1gg4pxv83TyYO5hkKyNb2gRFKxpIIHaKUbm5_b9i_N45jUP-Q=s0-d" style="margin-bottom:10px;" width="2000">In...
Book Review: The First Congress by Fergus M. Bordewich
img alt="Taking Office In April 1789, George Washington gave his inaugural address at New York’s old city hall." class="attachment-small wp-post-image" height="577" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uScHpVknRMuQs91fDDnRZIbID-t4dT1dzkZLpUFzYTGYs_npHEguoA5SjUfigosrQJm6HNH55Zpw=s0-d" style="margin-bottom:10px;" width="2000">How James Madison, George Washington, and a Group...
Book Review: The Lost Mandate of Heaven by Geoffrey Shaw
The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam
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Q&A: Interview with Charles Rappleye on Herbert Hoover
How do you see Herbert Hoover as president? Hoover was a failure right off the bat. He and the country recognized that even before the Depression, an event of historic proportions whose causes were well under way before he entered the White House. He was temperamentally not suited to the office, which came to haunt …
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Encounter: Frank Costello vs. Estes Kefauver
When a mobster tried to hide on live TV, his fingers did the talking
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Déjà Vu: Unconventional Wisdom
img alt="Call from Above: Wendell Willkie was the dark horse at the 1940 GOP convention, but after supporters roared his name from on high, he won on the sixth ballot." class="attachment-small wp-post-image" height="577" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ttKfWkUEOGw2i_PM4hgi2-fg5BJgtLWrNR7Dxldynf0ADuQItrZ8KJ0HbuoTacYOU_ecYYK0QxhA=s0-d" style="margin-bottom:10px;" width="2000">A...
Cameo: Botanist John Bartram and His Passion for Plants
img alt="Still Thriving: The Bartram estate is now a park with gardens, open grounds and river access." class="attachment-small wp-post-image" height="577" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_th-MRMf4-uUXOauWOnazHkTvnp2bIHmpOG0AF9QWIA8rEkVG10FgIA0Ri2Px19WL-fC8U9L6W87A=s0-d" style="margin-bottom:10px;" width="2000">John Bartram made a pastime and then a business of cataloging...
Daily Quiz for November 14, 2016
Oregon U.S. Senator Edward Baker who is the only sitting U.S. senator to be killed in battle, died in this war.
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Audio: How The Postal Service Helped Create The United States
Winifred Gallagher, author of "How the Post Office Created America: A History", explains how the Post Office helped establishing America even before the Declaration of Independence.
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Minggu, 13 November 2016
November 14, 1851: Moby-Dick published
On this day in 1851, Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville about the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, is published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: “Call me Ishmael.” Initially, though, the book about Captain Ahab and his quest for a giant white whale was a flop.
Herman Melville was born in New York City in 1819...
Sabtu, 12 November 2016
November 13, 1982: Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedicated
Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.
The designer of the memorial...
Daily Quiz for November 13, 2016
The first female journalist to go regularly to the White House to gather news, Emily Briggs, began this practice during his administration.
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Jumat, 11 November 2016
November 12, 1954: Ellis Island closes
On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s.
On January 2, 1892, 15-year-old Annie Moore, from Ireland, became the first person to pass...