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...
Kamis, 30 November 2017
Daily Quiz for December 1, 2017
This was the first American city to host the Olympics.
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CWT Book Review: Double Death
Double Death: The True Story of Pryce Lewis, the Civil War’s Most Daring Spy by Gavin Mortimer, Walker & Co. Pryce Lewis, who emigrated from Wales at age 28, joined Alan Pinkerton’s detective agency in 1860. Soon after George McClellan called on Pinkerton to establish a secret service, Lewis was dispatched to the West. McClellan …
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CWT Review: Kilted Warriors
Kilted Warriors: Music of the 79th New York Volunteer Infantry CD by the 79th Regimental Band, Field Music and Bagpipes, Celtboy Records, Ltd, celtboy.org The 79th New York Volunteer Infantry was primarily made up of Americans of Scottish descent, but its ranks were filled out with Irishmen. That Celtic emphasis was reflected in the regiment’s …
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Ural on URLs: NPS Forging a More Perfect Union
http://ift.tt/2nhdlJb In recognition of the 150th anniversary of America’s defining crisis, the U.S. National Park Service has created the website “The American Civil War: Forging a More Perfect Union.” Here visitors can find a wealth of information, some of it already familiar to Civil War Times readers, such as the Civil War Soldier and Sailor …
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CWT Book Review: Gentlemen Merchants
Gentlemen Merchants: A Charleston Family’s Odyssey, 1828-1870 edited by Philip N. Racine, University of Tennessee Press Brothers Henry and Louis Young wrote most of the Civil War–era letters in Gentlemen Merchants, an account of the prominent Gourdin and Young families in Charleston, S.C., over four decades. Their highly literate correspondence constitutes a significant resource on …
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CWT Book Review: The USS Carondelet
The USS Carondelet: A Civil War Ironclad in Western Waters by Myron J. Smith Jr., McFarland The seven “City” or Cairo-class ironclad gunboats designed by James B. Eads, Commander John Rodgers and John Lenthall, and modified by Eads and Naval Constructor Samuel M. Pook, were launched within three months, but they proved to be the …
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Crisis of Faith
Spiritual revivals gave soldiers a reason to keep on keeping on. In his forthcoming book God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War, Lincoln Prize–winning author George C. Rable looks at the role played by faith throughout the conflict. The following excerpt centers on the “harvest of souls” resulting from revival …
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Joseph Whitworth’s Deadly Rifle
Southern sharpshooters targeted Yankees with a long-range killer from England. For Union troops besieging Charleston, South Carolina, the summer of 1863 was a miserable time. Blistering heat and sand fleas were inescapable annoyances to be sure, but the nasty bite of a British-made weapon was what they feared the most. “The least exposure above the …
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Substitute for a Corpse
A photographer adds an extra ‘body’ to hype his work. Photographer Thomas C. Roche and his assistant raced into Fort Mahone on April 3, 1865, the day after the Rebel stronghold in the Petersburg line fell to a Union assault. Roche knew his business. He was eager to document for the first time the Confederate …
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CWT Letter from the Editor- December 2010
Et Tu, GBPA? Civil War preservationists have had a rough couple of decades. New development is constantly popping up to threaten hallowed ground, forcing preservation organizations to raise yet more money, testify at yet another county supervisors’ meeting or file yet another lawsuit. Throughout their struggles, such groups have often drawn strength from a sense …
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Collateral Damage: Bennett Place, Where the War Really Ended
The knock came around noon on a sunny spring day, April 17, 1865. When James Bennett and his wife Nancy opened their door, they saw Union Major General William T. Sherman and Confederate General Joseph Johnston, along with their staffs and escorts—several hundred soldiers in all. Johnston thought the farm, which he had passed earlier, …
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Blue and Gray: Union Vets Claimed They Fought for a ‘Higher’ Cause
It has become widely accepted that reconciliation quickly spread across the North and South after Appomattox, and that white Americans from both regions agreed to play down the importance of slavery and emancipation in an effort to heal wartime scars. Speeches delivered by Union veterans at Gettysburg in the late 1880s afford a perfect opportunity …
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CWT Today- December 2010
Site of War’s Largest Cavalry Battle Expands by 782 Acres Thanks to history-minded Culpeper County landowners, 782 acres were recently added to Virginia’s Brandy Station battlefield via two conservation easements. The 349-acre northern tract includes nearly a mile of Hazel River frontage and the site where Union Brig. Gen. John Buford’s cavalry fought Confederates under …
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CWT Letters from Readers- December 2010
Ewell’s Favorite Concoction The excellent article “Second-Guessing General Ewell” (August 2010) at long last places the history of Richard Ewell’s actions at Gettysburg in an accurate and most appropriate light. A very fine presentation. I have lived in General Ewell’s postwar home for 30 years, and still hear echoes of his pegleg at night—as though …
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Why Weren’t We Warned?
For America, the greatest single controversy of the Second World War has always been the attack on Pearl Harbor. The success of the Japanese assault seared the psyche of the nation. How, with the United States reading the highest-level Japanese diplomatic codes, could the country be caught by surprise? How, despite a November 27, 1941, waning of imminent war with Japan, could the Pacific Fleet be...
Rabu, 29 November 2017
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, 2017
This is the official name for the 1969 battle of Hamburger Hill
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WWII Review: Flight Simulator Aces the Move from PC to Console
Most World War II flight simulation–combat games attempt to draw the player in with a cinematic storyline or contrived, amateurish gameplay—but not IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey. There are no gimmicks here: this game relies on solid flight mechanics and realistic warplanes to intrigue and challenge armchair aviators of all skill levels. Though the PC …
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WWII Review: WWII in HD
Time: 10 hours. Color/B&W. Narrated by Gary Sinise. Think of this series as Ken Burns in astounding high definition, minus the often-portentous tone. It follows a dozen individuals (two war correspondents, an army nurse, a Tuskegee pilot, a marine, a GI, and so on) through the American aspects of the war, culling from diaries, letters, …
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WWII Book Review: Fire and Fury
Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942–1945 By Randall Hansen. 368 pp. NAL Caliber, 2009. $25.95. Many decades after the Axis defeat, the war’s strategic bombing campaigns still have the power to polarize. The 1994 dispute over the Smithsonian’s Enola Gay exhibit and the more recent debate over the portrayal of the British …
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WWII Book Review: Germany 1945
Germany 1945: From War to Peace By Richard Bessel. 544 pp. Harper, 2009. $28.99. A leading authority on 20th-century Germany combines scholarship and readability in this analysis of “Year Zero,” the turning point in the history of the German people. In 1945 they faced a stark choice: they could identify with the past and join …
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WWII Book Review: Japan’s Imperial Army
Japan’s Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945 By Edward J. Drea. 332 pp. University Press of Kansas, 2009. $34.95. This is the perfect meeting of author and subject: Edward J. Drea, the preeminent American authority on the Japanese Imperial Army, provides what is by far the most incisive English-language examination of that force. Drawing …
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Close Call Near Bastogne
In villages leading into Bastogne, two American battalions stave off a massive panzer assault. In the villages around Bastogne on December 24, 1944, American and German commanders braced for battle. In Rolle, northwest of Bastogne, snow covered the 16thcentury château that served as the headquarters for the 101st Airborne Division’s 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, and …
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The Speed-Up King
In 1940, a Danish machinist helped jump-start America’s transformation from carmaker to weapons giant. Sunday, May 26, 1940, was a momentous day on both sides of the Atlantic. On the beaches near the small French port of Dunkirk, a stunned Britain began evacuating troops cut off by Germany’s swift advance through France in a desperate …
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Teddy Suhren’s Last Patrol
Long-lost photographs document the final mission of a U-boat rebel. At 9:30 p.m. on July 9, 1942, the German submarine U-564 slipped out of the harbor at Brest, on the northwest coast of France. It was based there in a cavernous bunker that could accommodate as many as 20 U-boats under a protective roof of …
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WWII Letters from Readers- February 2010
More Than a Machine Ronald H. Bailey’s “The Incredible Jeep” was extremely interesting and obviously well researched (September 2009). He comments that GIs and generals alike considered the jeep practically indestructible! Well, I served in Italy in the winter of 1943–1944, when the land became a sea of thick, deep mud. Some of our jeeps …
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Last Train Home
After World War II, fallen American service personnel rode the rails to their resting places.
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Selasa, 28 November 2017
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, 2017
This was the first operational anti-ship missile.
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WWII Review: The Saboteur
Playing more like an action-adventure movie than a video game, The Saboteur puts you into the driving shoes of Sean Devlin, an Irish expatriate and saboteur based on real-life war hero William Grover-Williams—a Grand Prix– winning racecar driver turned Allied secret agent—with a little Steve McQueen and Indiana Jones thrown in. As Devlin, you’re seeking …
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WWII Review: At the Smithsonian’s Aviation Annex, Excitement Is In the Air
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Chantilly, Virginia http://ift.tt/2iZXYAr It sure looks big enough as you walk toward it through acres of parking. But once you’re inside, big becomes astounding. Its components spread before you, like a huge 3-D jigsaw puzzle. The effect is conjured by the teasingly brilliant, floor-to-ceiling layout …
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WWII Book Review: Rommel’s Desert War
Rommel’s Desert War: Waging World War II in North Africa, 1941–1943 By Martin Kitchen. 616 pp. Cambridge University Press, 2009. $38. Arguably the most provocative reassessment of this theater in many a year, this challenging, rich, well-argued tome forces careful revisits to dearly held truths about strategy, operations, tactics, and personalities. Start with the headliner: …
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WWII Book Review: Hitler’s Panzers
Hitler’s Panzers: The Lightning Attacks That Revolutionized Warfare By Dennis Showalter. 400 pp. Berkley, 2009. $25.95. The German army’s blitzkrieg and the tanks that carried it out have an almost mythological place in military history. In Hitler’s Panzers, Dennis Showalter seeks to bring the tanks’ achievements into a more balanced focus by revisiting their history, …
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WWII Book Review: Hell to Pay
Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945–47 By D. M. Giangreco. 363 pp. Naval Institute Press, 2009. $36.95. Readers of military history who seek tales of heroism in battle and the excitement of decisive maneuver on land, sea, and air tend to shun books that examine logistics, staff planning, and manpower …
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This Strange Britisher’: Orde Wingate in Ethiopia
Eccentric guerrilla warfare pioneer Orde Wingate helped the British drive the Italians out of Ethiopia in 1941. It was the moment Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie had dreamed of since Benito Mussolini’s army had taken over Addis Ababa and gained control of Ethiopia five years earlier. On May 5, 1941, the emperor jubilantly reentered the capital …
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Spy Class 101
In an obscure corner of Canada, British secret agents introduced American operatives to warfare’s dark arts. On November 21, 1941, the SS Pasteur, a former French luxury liner now stripped of its finery and ferrying raw materials and men across the deadly North American shipping routes, weighed anchor off the Scottish port of Greenock and …
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Gung Ho: The Makin Raid’s Strange Legacy
In August 1942, marine special forces raided a tiny Pacific atoll. Little was gained and much was lost. So why does the legacy of the Makin Raid live on? Two hundred marines swarmed onto the decks of the submarines USS Nautilus and USS Argonaut that squally, moonless morning, their uniforms dyed black, their faces daubed …
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WWII Letters from Readers- April 2010
The Next Great Mission I was compelled to comment on Rick Atkinson’s article in the November 2009 issue (“What is Lost?”). We are losing veterans daily and many of their stories go untold. My father was in the army, 28th Infantry Division, and served at the Battle of the Bulge. He only started talking of …
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World War II: Navajo Code Talkers
After repeated attempts by the Allies to stymie Japanese cryptographers during World War II, the Americans succeeded by developing a secret code based on the language of the Navajos.
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Strange Fortune
An American sub at the Battle of Midway finds that luck can be a powerful weapon. By the time the USS Tambor departed from Pearl Harbor on May 21, 1942, to battle the Japanese, Robert R. Hunt, torpedo- man second class, had already concluded he would not survive the war. In the first hours after …
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The Man Who Would Be Ike
What if Frank Andrews had survived his 1943 air crash? The American president’s personal airport is named for him. Gen. George C. Marshall referred to him as the only potential commander of Operation Overlord that he “had a chance to prepare all around.” Yet when the B-24 bomber carrying Lt. Gen. Frank Maxwell “Andy” Andrews …
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The Storm Before the Storm
Hundreds of thousands of troops were primed for the world’s largest amphibious operation. One man had the lonely burden of setting it all in motion. The final countdown to the D-Day landings at Normandy began on June 2, 1944, when Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower moved from his London headquarters to a sprawling Regency mansion known …
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WWII Letters from Readers- June 2010
Fond Memories of a Fallen Hero Your article “The Horticulturalist Who Got the Best of Bombs” (January/February 2010) brought back memories of my youth and stories I had heard from my family about the war. In the 1920s my uncle—my mother’s brother—was a saxophonist who played with the well-known Savoy Orpheans at the Savoy Hotel …
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Unbreakable: The Navajo Code
The Japanese cracked every American combat code until an elite team of Marines joined the fight. One veteran tells the story of creating the Navajo code and proving its worth on Guadalcanal.
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January 2018 Table of Contents
The January 2018 issue features a cover story about John Barry, widely acknowledged "Father of the U.S. Navy"
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Forced to the Cannon’s Mouth’: An Ohio Regiment’s Desperate Venture From Perryville to the War’s End
John Marshall Branum knew about abolition and slavery in the South from an early age. His parents were both Swedenborgian, members of a Christian sect founded in the 18th century that followed the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborg, a theologian and philosopher known for his praise of the spiritual character of the African people. When the Civil War began, the 21-year-old Branum was enrolled at the Hopedale...
Classic Dispatches | The Great Exodus
Cowles detailed her experiences as a war correspondent in her first book, "Looking for Trouble," published in 1941, from which the narrative that follows is excerpted
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Media Digest | Myth-Busting the Tet Offensive
Fought across the length and breadth of South Vietnam, the 1968 Tet Offensive ended in a military defeat for the Communists but, according to conventional wisdom, crippled President Lyndon B. Johnson politically and undermined public support for the war because of its scale and casualties
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Insight: Capitol Commanders
A Congressional committee kept a close eye on Union generals Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War ranks among the indispensable sources on the Union war effort. Published in eight volumes between 1863 and 1866 and reprinted and indexed by Broadfoot Publishing in 1998, this set consists of more than 5,000 …
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Senin, 27 November 2017
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, 2017
He was the first president to use the veto.
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WWII Review: Japanese Type 97 Chi-Ha Tank
The Type 97 was Japan’s standard medium tank during World War II. It first saw action against Russian forces at Nomonhan in 1939, and continued service throughout the war. When the Type 97 found itself outclassed by Allied tanks later in the war; it became more often deployed in bunker and pillbox fortifications rather than …
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WWII Book Review: Hero of the Pacific
Hero of the Pacific: The Life of Marine Legend John Basilone By James Brady. 272 pp. Wiley, 2010. $25.95. In October 1942, marine Sgt. John Basilone earned the Medal of Honor on Guadalcanal by defeating a massive Japanese attack with his machine gun sections. The handsome young man of proud Italian descent became arguably the …
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Iron Will: Scrapping History
Americans at times went too far in their nearly unstoppable drive to collect scrap metal for the war effort. Every store, farm, and business in Comanche County shut down for the day on Friday, August 28, 1942. This was no traditional holiday for the people in this southwestern Kansas county. This was Scrap Harvest Day. …
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Pirates of the Sand Seas
How a group of gentleman explorers became Britain’s legendary Long Range Desert Group. MAJ. RALPH A. BAGNOLD sat before the commander of British forces in the Middle East. He watched nervously as Gen. Archibald Wavell picked up the note Bagnold had sent him half an hour earlier outlining why, in Bagnold’s view, it was imperative …
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WWII Letters from Readers- August 2010
Still “Gung Ho” While browsing my local bookstore the other day, your March/April 2010 issue, featuring an article on Carlson’s raiders and the Makin Raid, caught my eye. To my surprise you quoted an acquaintance of mine, Pfc. Brian Quirk. I heard he was a World War II veteran of the Marine Corps, and since …
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WWII Model Review: Britain’s Spitfire Mk. IXC
The German Fw 190 asserted its authority as soon as it appeared over the English Channel in September 1941. It was so clearly superior to the Spitfire Mk. V that RAF Fighter Command curtailed operations due to unacceptably high losses. As an interim solution the RAF decided to fit the Merlin 61 engine into the …
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WWII Review: Hitler’s Managers
Hitler’s Managers Time: 5 hours This fall on The Military Channel Five fascinating hour-long episodes examine, in rewarding depth, the relationships the führer had with key figures of the Reich. Instead of focusing on Nazi princes, this series explains how vital technocrats dealt with the dictator and made—or tried to make—things work more efficiently to …
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WWII Book Review: Fortress Rabaul
Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942–April 1943 By Bruce Gamble. 416 pp. Zenith Press, 2010. $28. To human history’s endless chronicle of sieges by land and sea, World War II added a new phenomenon: sieges by air, where aerial bombardment substituted for ground assault or sea blockade to reduce a fortress …
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The Other Dunkirk
Even as the famous flotilla departed France, British general Archie Beauman was conjuring up his own miracle hundreds of miles to the south. Brig. Gen. Archibald Bentley Beauman, taking stock of his troops’ situation in northern France on the evening of May 20, 1940, was concerned, to put it mildly. In a lightning advance, the …
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Triumph on Bataan
At a place that evokes loss, America forged an unlikely victory. As seen from Lt. William E. Dyess’s new vantage point, this war was not going well. Not for the United States. Not for his men. And certainly not for him. In mid-January 1942, Dyess, the commanding officer of the 21st Pursuit Squadron, was out …
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Time Travel: The Garden Spot Where Hitler’s War Ended and the Cold War Began
ON APRIL 26, 1945, six days before Soviet troops finished taking what smoldering husks were left of Berlin, they captured Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam, 17 miles to the southwest. Built during World War I by Kaiser Wilhelm II for Crown Prince Wilhelm, the 176-room Tudor style manor, fronting luxuriant grounds and lakes, was completely intact—a …
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WWII Today- October 2010
Stalin’s Top General Admits Germany Nearly Defeated Russia at Moscow Western historians have been saying it for decades, but to hear it from Georgy Zhukov himself is something else entirely. In a shockingly candid interview that was finally broadcast in Russia for the first time this year,the commander of the Red Army during World War …
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WWII Letters from Readers- October 2010
Battles of The Pacific The large two-page photo from The Pacific review on page 69 in the May/June issue depicts four attacking marines, one with a flamethrower and three with M-1 rifles. Two of the marines, the ammo carrier and the prone marine closest to him are carrying rifles which are empty, as the operating …
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Minggu, 26 November 2017
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!â€
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...
Daily Quiz for November 27, 2017
The musical Cats was inspired by this book.
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Sabtu, 25 November 2017
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, 2017
This was the code name for the 1983 US invasion of Grenada.
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Jumat, 24 November 2017
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...
Daily Quiz for November 25, 2017
This was the first toy advertised on TV.
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Kamis, 23 November 2017
Oz in ’Nam
Joining the American intervention in Vietnam, Australia experienced similar battlefield successes in-country and political setbacks on the home front
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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, 2017
On September 7, 1963 the first episode of this Japanese Anime was broadcast on American TV.
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Rabu, 22 November 2017
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...
Daily Quiz for November 23, 2011
President during an extremely difficult chapter in American history, this chief executive said, “the presidency touches the happiness of every home.”
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What was the Navy Doing in China?
Spying, weather reporting, training Chinese fighters— and battling foes within. “What the hell is the navy doing here?” That’s how U.S. Navy radioman Richard Rutan was greeted when he stepped down from a C-47 plane in central China in June 1944. The question was somehow fitting for Rutan, a member of the Sino-American Cooperative Organization, …
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Russia’s Ice Road Truckers
During the most lethal siege in history, the fate of millions hinged on one treacherous supply route. The pair of Messerschmitts banked low in the sky as they made another run against the long string of trucks silhouetted by the moon against the white ice. For some reason these Germans had picked out Maxim Tverdokhleb’s …
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WWII Today- December 2010
Stalin Raises a Ruckus at American D-Day Memorial Should he stay or should he go? A heated war of words erupted in a Virginia town this summer when a sculpture of Stalin was added to the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford—a small town 200 miles south of Washington, D.C.—joining a bronze lineup of all of …
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WWII Letters from Readers- December 2010
Readers Point to the War’s Decisive Moments More than 100 readers responded to our article “What Was the Turning Point of World War II?” in the July/August issue, submitting their own turning points by mail and joining the debate at WorldWarII.com. Some pointed to small errors that had big consequences, like the inadvertent bombing of …
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February 2018 Table of Contents
The February 2018 cover story profiles Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna, who won at the Alamo but lost the Texas Revolution
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February 2018 Readers’ Letters
Readers share dispatches about notable Chiricahua Apache woman Huera and the Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota
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Book Review: Captain Charles Rawn and the Frontier Infantry in Montana
Robert Brown profiles Charles Coatesworth Rawn, one of the overlooked frontier Army officers of the Indian wars era
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Book Review: The Victory With No Name
Colin Calloway recounts the most lopsided American Indian defeat of the U.S. Army — no, not on the Little Bighorn
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Book Review: Chief Joseph
Ted Meyers expounds on the life of Chief Joseph, sometime leader of the Nez Perce during their 1877 flight/fight
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Book Review: The Wild West Meets the Big Apple
Michael P. O’Connor catalogs the comings and goings of famous Westerners to and from New York City
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Really Reading the Riot Act
A hoary English law often invoked in America has a revolting backstory.
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Really Reading the Riot Act
A hoary English law often invoked in America has a revolting backstory.
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Selasa, 21 November 2017
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, 2017
He was the first American president to hire a professional speechwriter.
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Missing Alamo Missives
On March 3, 1836, three days before the iconic last stand, Texian couriers slipped several dispatches through Mexican lines. Have those letters vanished from history?
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Harold T. Holden
Oklahoma sculptor Harold Holden honors such homegrown heroes as lawman Bass Reeves and cowboy humorist Will Rogers
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Author Matthew P. Mayo
Matthew Mayo splits his time between New England and the West, writing both nonfiction and fiction
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Letter From Wild West – February 2018
This old editor feels a kinship with author and Western adventurer Stephen Crane
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Lincoln, Monuments, and Memory: Harold Holzer’s Remembrance Day Address
Civil War Times Advisory Board Member Harold Holzer delivered a speech at Gettysburg’s Remembrance Day, November 19, 2017, celebrating the 154th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address and examining current monument issues. His full remarks were as follows: Some three score and seven miles from this spot—in Washington—stands a statue of Abraham Lincoln. ...
Franklin’s Great Escape
Major General William B. Franklin was a Union corps commander in various theaters during the war, but battlefield success typically eluded him.
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Senin, 20 November 2017
Artists | Sketches of War
Victor Lundy is best known as a modernist architect. But a set of his old sketchbooks offers a vivid visual diary of life—and death—in wartime
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INTERVIEW With Judith Giesberg: Eyes of the Beholder
Anthony Comstock, notorious anti-obscenity campaigner, served in the Union Army during the Civil War.
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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...
Daily Quiz for November 21, 2017
This American first lady’s Secret Service code name was Rover.
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1939 Polish Cavalry vs. German Panzers
The real story is far more interesting than the enduring Nazi-promulgated myth. On September 1, 1939, German land, air, and sea units struck targets all across Poland. Although it was not a surprise attack, the speed and level of violence of the assault were unprecedented. Polish defenders had to react quickly as planes, tanks, and …
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To Catch a Traitor
Recruited by George Washington to kidnap the turncoat Benedict Arnold, John Champe had to join the British himself to trap his man. On September 25, 1780, George Washington was scheduled to inspect West Point with Major General Benedict Arnold, the fort’s newly appointed commander. Washington considered the fortress the “key to America” and had tapped …
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Shooting Down a Legend
Despite its enduring fame, the Red Baron’s slow, crash-prone Fokker triplane was no great fighting machine. High over La Neuville airfield in occupied France, October 30, 1917, a lone Fokker triplane soared through the late afternoon sky. Its pilot, Lieutenant Heinrich Gontermann, a 39-victory ace and commander of a fighter squadron, or Jagdstaffel, was test-flying …
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Everyman’s Gun- The AK-47
How Cold War politics made the AK-47 the world’s most ubiquitous gun. Plus—Fidel, Saddam, and the history of automatic weapons. One weapon alone has been a consistent presence in modern war: the infantry rifle. Tanks can rout conventional armies. GPS-guided ordnance can scatter combatants. Land mines, suicide bombers, and improvised explosives have grabbed headlines in …
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‘A Madman’s Business’
Death was everywhere at Cold Harbor in 1864, but the point of the killing and the war itself seemed lost. THE REVERED CIVIL WAR HISTORIAN and writer Bruce Catton won a Pulitzer Prize in 1954 for A Stillness at Appomattox, his account of the war’s final year. In May 1864, soon after Ulysses S. Grant …
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Churchill at War: Scandinavian Twist
Churchill’s fiasco in Norway in 1940 propelled him into office—and ensured Hitler would fail to turn back the D-Day invasion four years later. On April 15, 1940, utterly alone and deeply worried, the commander in chief of Germany’s armed forces, Adolf Hitler, sat in the far corner of a room full of busy staff officers, …
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Tactical Exercises: Fear the Phalanx
The Macedonian formation terrified opponents— and at times overwhelmed the vaunted Roman legion. ONE DAY in late June 168 Rome and Macedon were encamped be- tween Mount Olympus and the port city BC, the armies of of Pydna in Macedonia. The two empires had been at war for three years, but campaigning of late had …
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MHQ Letters from Readers- Winter 2011
Illusions of victory WHEN I READ your magazine, I seek to learn about new subjects or aspects of the familiar that I had not considered. But “Blinded by Hope” Autumn 2010, by Thomas Fleming, left me unenlightened and, frankly, angry. The author’s thesis is not truly groundbreaking. Is it surprising that the United States, or …
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Minggu, 19 November 2017
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, 2017
U.S. Speaker of the House Champ Clark nearly became the Democratic presidential candidate in 1912 but lost to this man.
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Sabtu, 18 November 2017
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, 2017
For years, the White House was an unkempt, deteriorating building whose upkeep was primarily at the president’s expense causing this president to call it “a temple of inconveniences.”
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Jumat, 17 November 2017
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...
Artists on War: If at First You Do Succeed
John Trumbull painted three versions of The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar. He always considered the first effort his best. THE AMERICAN Revolution culminated in failure for the British. But even as it was unfolding, Britain was claiming an unlikely victory on the other side of the world as it defended Gibraltar against …
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Wellesley’s Trial
How the calcified British high command nearly sacrificed the young general— and Britain’s future—after he defeated the French in 1808. Victory on the battlefield can be easily frittered away. Anyone familiar with the British Army in the early 19th century knows this, and can readily identify the errors, missteps, and sheer incompetence at high levels …
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The End of Athens
A demagogue, a treacherous ally, and a brutal Roman general destroyed the city-state—and democracy—in the first century BC. Two scenes from Athens in the first century BC: Early summer, 88 BC A cheering crowd surrounds the envoy Athenion as he makes a rousing speech. He’s just returned to the citystate from a mission across the …
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Getting the Truth Out
Ten Americans made a daring escape from the Japanese and shocked the home front with the first detailed account of the Bataan Death March. One day in early May 1943, ten American servicemen emerged from the jungle on the northern coast of Mindanao, a wild and remote island in the southern Philippines. They had quite …
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Daily Quiz for November 18, 2017
Widowed between his election and his inauguration, this president kept a portrait of his wife next to his heart.
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Lee Takes Charge
McClellan thought he was timid. Newspapers called him ‘Granny Lee.’ But once in command, the general attacked quickly and boldly. The musketry and artillery fire had died away with nightfall on May 31, 1862. For most of that day, the fighting had raged in the woodlots and clearings around Seven Pines and Fair Oaks Station, …
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Arms and Men: Underwater Terror
The plucky Bushnell brothers invented the military submarine, frightened the mighty British fleet, and gave George Washington a bit of hope. LEONARDO da Vinci, a great dabbler in military machines, once sketched designs for a crude subma- rine. Yet he refused to publish them, saying he feared “assassination at the bottom of the sea.” Centuries …
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MHQ Letters from Readers- Spring 2011
Poland’s Just Deserts I WOULD LIKE to thank John Dunn, author of “1939: Polish Cavalry vs. German Panzers” Winter 2011. Far too often, the contributions of Poland—the “first ally,” as English historian Norman Davies calls it—are dismissed. Polish soldiers, sailors, and airmen played a role in many of the major western and eastern European campaigns, …
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The Battle of Algiers, Torture, and Marcel Bigeard
IN LATE 1956 FRENCH AUTHORITIES concluded they had to stop the protests and terrorist bombings in Algiers. The 10th Parachute Division assumed civil and military powers in the Algerian capital and its paras set about destroying the National Liberation Front (FLN) networks. The division included the 3rd Regiment of Colonial Parachutists, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel …
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Revolution Unleashed
In the 1950s, Algerian rebels fought the French for independence, losing nearly every battle, but winning the war. Glasses tinkled and voices rose and fell with laughter at the Milk-Bar, a soda shop in the European section of Algiers, the capital of the French département of Algeria. As families crowded inside, a few eyes roved …
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Fooled Again
A band of 57 Modoc warriors repeatedly outsmarted and outfought U.S. Army troops in California’s rugged high desert. On the cold, flint-gray morning of November 29, 1872, as sleet drummed the frozen earth, 37 troopers of Company B, 1st U.S. Cavalry, entered a camp of nearly 200 Modoc Indians on the Lost River near where …
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Play It Again, Putzi
A piano-playing Nazi official charmed Hitler, then betrayed him to the United States. During the height of World War II, a longtime intimate of Adolf Hitler lived as a pampered prisoner on a Virginia plantation eight miles from the White House. A gifted pianist and composer, Putzi Hanfstaengl had for years charmed his friend with …
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Tactical Exercises: Art of the Siege
A Byzantine emperor’s military manual describes how psychological warfare can break the will of the enemy. Leo VI, the Byzantine emperor from AD 886 to 912, was an extraordinary armchair general. Though he probably never set foot on the battlefield, he decided to compile the best teachings about warfare and effective armies, reaching back to …
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