From the Sea to the Moon Twenty-three-year-old Lieutenant Thomas O. Paine boarded the giant Japanese submarine with some trepidation. It was September 1945, and Japan had surrendered just days earlier. “I recall my mixed emotions as we pulled alongside her towering hull and scrambled…onto her foredeck,” he wrote in an unpublished memoir. “I was excited …
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Kiffin Yates Rockwell set out to settle multiple scores with the ‘Boche’ over France. In early August 1914, the French consulate’s office in New Orleans received an unusual letter. Just days after France entered World War I, two American brothers had written to volunteer for the French army. Although the United States would not officially …
The post First American Aerial Victory appeared first on HistoryNet.
David Hammond’s painting Uncommon Chivalry highlights a rare compassionate act in the midst of combat more than six decades ago. In it he depicts Republic P-47D pilot Major Bill Dunham circling over a Japanese flier he had just shot down over the Philippine Sea in December 1944. Dunham is shown tossing his own lifejacket to …
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The Maid of Harlech It’s unusual that somebody comes across the wreck of a World War II aircraft who has the forbearance to not only leave the wreckage undisturbed but to maintain secrecy about its location, and then to search out a like-minded aviation archaeologist who will treat the discovery in a professional manner. But …
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The post About-Face: Maybe Ben Butler, Notorious ‘Beast’ of New Orleans, Wasn’t So Bad After All appeared first on HistoryNet.
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Winged Victory by V.M. Yeates This is absolutely the best novel on World War I aviation bar none, not only because it is rigorously authentic but because it is beautifully written. The irony is that the author, V.M. Yeates, a Sopwith Camel pilot for the RFC and RAF, wrote it when he was very ill …
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The God Machine: From Boomerangs to Black Hawks, The Story of the Helicopter by James R. Chiles, Bantam Books, New York, 2007, $25. From its unusual title to the final page, this is a fascinating history of the development of the helicopter and its use in peace and war. Not only does Chiles review the …
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Berlin Airlift: The Salvation of a City by Jon Sutherland and Diane Canwell, Pelican Publishing, Gretna, La., 2008, $24.95. The division of Germany after World War II into four occupation zones, with Berlin buried deep inside the Russian sector, was not an amicable one. The Soviets harassed vehicles on the supply route to Berlin at …
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Red Baron: The Life and Death of an Ace by Peter Kilduff, David & Charles Ltd., Cincinnati, Ohio, 2007, $30. As the highest-scoring fighter pilot of World War I, Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, more widely known as the Red Baron, has been the subject of countless books—a good many of them focusing on the controversy …
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Pan American Clippers: The Golden Age of Flying Boats by James Trautman, Boston Mills Press, 2007, $49.95. The story of Pan American Airways and the magnificent flying boats that marked the beginning of international air travel has been told many times, but not with the illustrative detail that James Trautman now brings us. He captures …
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Rupert Red Two: A Fighter Pilot’s Life From Thunderbolts to Thunderchiefs by Jack Broughton, Zenith Press, St. Paul, Minn., 2008, $26.95. There are two words on the cover of this book that should make anyone—aviation enthusiast or not—buy it: “Jack Broughton,” a true American warrior-hero, a great writer of best-selling books, a magnificent pilot and …
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Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and his American Volunteers, 1941-1942 by Daniel Ford, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2007, $15.95. The Burma Air Campaign, 1941-1945 by Michael Pearson, Pen & Sword Books Ltd., Barnsley, South Yorkshire, UK, 2007, $39.95. When Daniel Ford’s history of the American Volunteer Group, Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault and his American Volunteers, …
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A running dogfight raged over the city’s rooftops in July 1944. Tommy Hayes was one of the most capable fighter squadron leaders of the U.S. Eighth Air Force. When I talked with him in 1998, I asked if there was any World War II mission that stood out from all the others. “It is hard …
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It’s easy enough to design a bad airplane, but it takes real gumption to put it into production despite all signs to the contrary. There are many reasons why less than first-rate aircraft are produced in quantity. The most dominant factor is the perceived urgency of the need. If war is threatening, or if an …
The post Unfettered Turkeys appeared first on HistoryNet.
Frederick Libby became America’s first ace while flying as an observer-gunner in a spindly British pusher-propelled biplane. The apprentice airman could scarcely believe his situation. Yesterday he had been a supply truck driver with the Canadian Ordnance Corps. Today he was flying as an observer in the Royal Flying Corps, looking down from 10,000 feet …
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Built in vast numbers, Aleksandr Yakovlev’s fighters were among the most important Allied aircraft of World War II. Yakovlev aircraft have become as closely associated with World War II Soviet air power as Messerschmitts are with the Luftwaffe, Spitfires with the Royal Air Force and Zeros with the Japanese. More Yak fighters were built than …
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During a meteoric combat career, ‘Scarsdale Jack’ Newkirk blazed the way for his fellow Panda Bear pilots. “For a period of more than three months after Pearl Harbor the American Volunteer Group was the pet and darling of the United States and the United Nations,” wrote Olga Greenlaw in her 1943 book The Lady and …
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A Life in Aviation The fresh-faced young man—kid, really—smiles as he poses for a photo in front of his shark-mouthed Curtiss P-40N Warhawk in China. Don Lopez was only 19 when he shipped out to join the 75th Fighter Squadron of the 23rd Fighter Group, successor to the legendary Flying Tigers (see story, P. 24), …
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With the V8, Anthony Fokker pursued a questionable concept into extreme territory. “Fokker is still the old Fokker,” wrote Lieutenant Rudolf Stark after seeing Fokker D.VII and E.V fighters on August 24, 1918, “for every new machine he brings out is a considerable improvement on the last. Other firms also bring out new machines, but …
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Formerly a Nazi war trophy, a rare PZL P.11c is now the crown jewel in Krakow’s Polish Aviation Museum. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, one of its key objectives was to annihilate the Polish air force. One reason the Luftwaffe failed to achieve that goal was the Polish Ministry of Defense’s decision …
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Raymonde de Laroche’s first flight with Wilbur Wright sparked a fatal attraction to flying. When Wilbur Wright went to France in 1908 to demonstrate the Flyer to skeptical French officials, he followed his dazzling aerial displays near Le Mans by offering to give rides to women in the crowd. Among those who took him up …
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The Oldest Herk The U.S. Marines traditionally get the short end of the stick when it comes to aircraft. Their planes are often old and outmoded, or variants that the Navy isn’t quite sure what to do with. So it should come as no surprise that the Marine Corps recently retired the oldest U.S. military …
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Seiran Engine Surfaces I was delighted to see the article in your May issue about the Japanese subs that carried Aichi M6A1 Seiran floatplanes (“Japan’s Panama Canal Buster,” by John Geoghegan). A few years ago, my organization contracted for the restoration of a Kawasaki Ki.61 Hien “Tony” fighter. Since the plan was to rebuild it …
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Octave Chanute conducted from behind the scenes. The letter, dated May 13, 1900, was astonishing in its directness, lacking even the customary salutation. “For some years,” it began, “I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost …
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Plenty of experiments end in failure, so it’s not surprising very few people actually witnessed the Wright brothers’ Flyer inaugurate the aerial age at Kitty Hawk. In fact, the Wrights didn’t send an account of their flights to the Associated Press until three weeks after the December 17, 1903, breakthrough. Fortunately for the air-minded public, …
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The Rocket Racing League Do not bet against entrepreneur Peter Diamandis. Crazy as his ideas might superficially seem, he makes them work. Diamandis’ X-Prize Foundation led to the first successful private-venture spacecraft, Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne, and he is currently offering what will probably end up being a $25 million prize for the first truly production-ready, …
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Tiger Tale Congratulations on the fine Scarsdale Jack story in the July issue. The famous R.T. Smith photo you used in Bob Bergin’s article “Flying Tiger, Burning Bright” shows a five-ship formation. R.T. also took another shot of just three of the five the same day. The P-40 closest to the camera in both pictures …
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It’s always nice to have a good co-pilot. When you’re a flight sim fan, however, good co-pilots can consist of Web sites such as simviation.com, FlightSim.com and AVSIM.com. “Airware” has covered notable Web offerings before, but these three sites offer a treasure-trove of content for Microsoft Flight Simulator players. It’s common to find simulation sites …
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Come North with Me by Bernt Balchen Arctic explorer and pilot Bernt Balchen has long been one of my heroes. I had been reading about his daring exploits for many years before I was fortunate enough to meet him. Working with him on a committee, I discovered that despite his awe-inspiring credentials he was a …
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Story of the 1929-1949 National Air Races produced by The National Air Races Project, Twins burg, Ohio, $28.95 plus postage and handling (https://ift.tt/2IwUobq) In the days before television, the National Air Races drew huge crowds—just as big as the ones the Kentucky Derby and Indianapolis 500 still draw today. Pylon racing and cross-country events routinely …
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In Their Own Words: True Stories and Adventures of the American Fighter Ace by James A. Oleson, iUniverse, Lincoln, Neb., 2007,$34.95 With the passing of World War II and Korean War veterans, there’s a feeling of urgency among historians—or anybody with a sense of history—to record their stories before they’re lost to us all. Jack …
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Thy Flying Greek: An Immigrant Fighter Ace’s WWII Odyssey With the RAF, USAAF, and French Resistance by Colonel Steve N. Pisanos, U.S. Air Force (ret.) Potomac Books, Herndon, Va., $34.95 Born in the Athenian suburb of Kolonos on November 10, 1919, Spiros Nicholas Pisanos was a merchant seaman in April 1938 when he jumped ship …
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Combat Pair: The Evolution of Air Force–Navy Integration in Strike Warfare by Benjamin S. Lambeth, RAND Corp., Santa Monica, Calif., 2007, $22 “Jointness” is a term too often bandied about by speechmakers these days, almost always with the implication that it’s a long-established American tradition. In Combat Pair, the senior analyst at the RAND Corporation, …
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Adventures in Flying by Jack Elliott, Alexander & Ray, Gillette, N.J., 2007,$29.95 It probably sounds elitist to say this, but I believe readers can usually tell when an aviation book is written by a pilot. There is an unmistakable ring of authenticity, not only when it comes to the events described but also extending to …
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Clear the Deck! Aircraft Carrier Accidents of World War II by Cory Graff, Specialty Press, North Branch, Minn., 2008, $16.95 If Japanese and American carrier pilots displayed remarkable mastery in their early WWII encounters, it reflected the skill they needed just to be able to land aboard the heaving flight decks of their ships. But …
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London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace by Ian Castle, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, England, 2007, $19.95 Ever since Louis Blériot made his cross-Channel flight of 1909, Britons had contemplated with growing unease their newfound vulnerability to air attack. Those fears became reality during World War I when, as part of its effort to break British resolve, Germany …
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Black Wings: Courageous Stories of African Americans in Aviation and Space History by Von Hardesty, Smithsonian Books, New York, 2008, $21.95 Blue Skies, Black Wings: African American Pioneers of Aviation by Samuel L. Broadnax, Praeger, Westport, Conn., 2007,$44.95 Two recent books provide perspective on how changes introduced through military training helped to erase the myth …
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A bare-bones biplane served as a faithful beast of burden and potent psyops weapon in two wars. At 3 a.m. on November 28, 1950, troops at Pyongyang airfield in northwestern Korea heard the sputtering engine of an intruder overhead. A tiny plane flew low and slow over the 8th Fighter-Bomber Group’s parking ramp, dropping a …
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The Music of the Wild West produced by John McEuen,Varese Sarabande Records, Studio City, Calif., 2007, $13.98. One of the best things about the 1993 10-hour documentary series The Wild West was the award-winning music produced by John McEuen. Now that music—including such unforgettable classics as “Buffalo Gals,” “Home on the Range,” “Shenandoah,” “Dreary Black …
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Sitting Bull: A Stone in My Heart Lillimar Pictures,Santa Barbara, Calif.,(www.sittingbull film.com),83-minute documentary,2006, $20.98. Sitting Bull, as portrayed by August Schellenberg, made his strong presence felt in the recent HBO film Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, but its worth taking another look at him and a listen, too (Adam Fortune Eagle is the voice …
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Buffalo Soldiers in the West: A Black Soldiers Anthology edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles, Texas A&M University Press, College Station, 2007, $19.95 paperback. Although buffalo soldiers might have been often overlooked or dismissed during their time, much has been written in the last few decades about these black cavalrymen and infantrymen …
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Deadly Dozen: Forgotten Gunfighters of the Old West,Vol. 2 by Robert DeArment, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2007, $29.95. Back in 2003, Western gunfighter guru Robert DeArment presented his first dozen forgotten gunfighters to the delight of anyone who wanted to hear about pistol-packers who haven’t gotten the publicity of say Wyatt Earp or John …
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Tough Towns: True Tales From the Gritty Streets of the Old West Robert Barr Smith, Twodot (an imprint of Globe Pequot Press), Guilford, Conn., 2007, $12.95. Robert Barr Smith, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma with a love for the sometimes-lawless Old West days, loves Western towns that fight back. Earlier he wrote …
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Whispering Smith: His Life and Misadventures by Allen P. Bristow, Sunstone Press, Santa Fe, N.M., 2007, $24.95 paperback. A book of 173 pages might not sound very long, but it’s quite an accomplishment when the subject matter is a man named Smith who whispered (or didn’t say anything) a lot, tended to be secretive and …
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Getting Away With Murder on the Texas Frontier: Notorious Killings & Celebrated Trials by Bill Neal, Texas Tech University Press, Lubbock, $27.95. The Texas criminal justice system is well known today for being tough on perpetrators of violent crime. There are currently 376 convicted felons on death row, far more than any other state in …
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It was overshadowed by Colt revolvers The powerful .44- caliber cap-and-ball Walker Colt and its lighter-framed, shorter-barreled derivative, the Model 1848 Colt Dragoon revolver, were hits on the Western frontier after the Mexican War. But before that conflict and even after (well into the 1850s), a decidedly unglamorous single-shot muzzleloading percussion cap piece was making …
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Nohwike´ Bágowa houses tribal artifacts. “I have selected a site for a military post on the White Mountain River, which is the finest I ever saw,” said Major John Green. “The climate is delicious, and said by the Indians to be perfectly healthy, free from all malaria.” Construction began in May 1870 on the post, …
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In 1849 Elder Parley P. Pratt, the great-great-grandfather of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, led the first Mormons into southwestern Utah, describing it as “a country…turned inside out, upside down, by terrible convulsions in some former age.” On October 6, 1861, Brigham Young called 300 Mormon families on the Cotton Mission—a church-led effort to settle the …
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The small but rugged Dragoon Mountains in southeastern Arizona became the fortified home of the great Apache chief. As travelers speed west on Interstate 10 from Lordsburg, New Mexico, crossing the border into southeastern Arizona, they enter a land many of them only wish to leave behind. They soon reach the small town of Willcox, …
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He worked on the Fountain murder case. Historian C.L. Sonnichsen introduced Pinkerton operative J.C. Fraser to his readers during his coverage of the disappearance of Colonel Albert J. Fountain in Tularosa: Last of the Frontier West, first published in 1960. Sonnichsen gave no information on Fraser other then his involvement in the Fountain case, and …
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The murder case lives on in Corey Recko’s book. Attorney Albert J. Fountain and his 8-year-old son, Henry, disappeared somewhere in the White Sands of southeastern New Mexico Territory in February 1896. Ambush and murder were suspected, and much later there would be a murder trial, though neither body was ever found and nobody would …
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The Real West: Cowboys and Outlaws Greystone Communications, Inc., and A&E Television Networks, 2007 DVD format (produced 1993-94), eight 45-minute episodes, $17.95. The Real West aired on A&E from 1992 to 1994, and its success helped convince A&E producers to launch The History Channel in 1995. Hosted and narrated competently by Kenny Rogers, the TV …
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Ghost Towns and Mining Districts of Montana by Terry Halden, Old Butte Publishing, Butte, Mont., 2007, $24.95. A native Montanan with a smile as large as the Big Sky once took me into the hills of Granite County to show me the goldmining ghost town of Garnet. On a windowsill of one of the empty …
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Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans by Jean Pfaelzer, Random House, New York, 2007, $27.95. The discovery of gold in California in January 1848 attracted hordes of prospectors, entrepreneurs and workers, but not all found themselves welcome. Immigrants from China were subjected to incessant Anglo-American violence. As early as 1849, a mob of …
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Nantan: The Life and Times of John P. Clum, Volume 1, Claverack to Tombstone 1851-1882 by Gary Ledoux, Trafford Pub., Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 2007, $39 paperback. Although his Tombstone Epitaph office was only a few feet away from the famous O.K. Corral street fight, editor John P. Clum missed the action on the afternoon …
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Andy Warhol created a West portfolio a year before his death. Andy Warhol may be better known for his cans of Campbell’s Soup and his Marilyn Monroes, but his penchant for making Pop Art out of America’s national myths also drew him to the Wild West. One year before his death in 1987, Warhol produced …
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It proved itself during the Mexican War and on the frontier. It was one of the most popular military and civilian rifles of its day, won glory in two major wars and saw service along the Western frontier from the Rio Grande to Puget Sound. An official U.S. government martial arm, it was treated as …
The post The Mississippi Rifle Became a Classic Western Arm appeared first on HistoryNet.
The Kansas museum has more than a few soldier surprises. The soldiers of the past are, naturally, well represented at the Frontier Army Museum in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Visitors will see plenty of guns, uniforms and equipment used west of the Mississippi River, from the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804 to General “Black Jack” …
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Lode mines were discovered at the 6,500-foot level in the Garnet Mountains as early as 1867, when prospectors from Bear Gulch, 2,000 feet below, wandered up First Chance Creek looking for the source of their placer gold. But the area was so remote, and the trail so precipitous, that any thought of development was quickly …
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Independence Day meant something to William Clark, to those emigrants who arrived at Independence Rock in time and to anyone in need of a lift. Twenty-eight years after the United States proclaimed its independence from England, somebody west of the Mississippi finally got around to celebrating the Fourth of July. Guess nobody had bothered to …
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Brigadier General Alfred Sully’s 1863 expedition against hostile Sioux who had been involved in the previous year’s uprising in Minnesota and had escaped to Dakota Territory led to one of the most fierce yet overlooked clashes in the Indian wars. In the waning light of the early September after- noon, Major Alfred E. House, 6th …
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Before Iowa was Iowa, it was a land without law enforcement or courts, but when cold-blooded murder was committed there in 1834, the settlers in Dubuque improvised quite well. Frontier justice in a lawless land just west of the Mississippi River ran its swift course, and on June 20, 1834, cheers greeted the hanging of …
The post The Hanging of Patrick O’Connor and Frontier Justice appeared first on HistoryNet.
After corporate ranching came to Texas. In the spring of 1883, a group of cowboys walked off the job in Oldham County, in northwest Texas by the New Mexico line. The strike came about because Gilded Age business practices were moving West, overturning the traditional close relationship between ranch owner and ranch hand. By the …
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The debate continues over where his bones belong. The 16-year-old boy caught the horse for his father along the Grand River and was bringing it home on the frosty morning of December 15, 1890, before the first glimmer of daylight. As he passed the cabin of his famous uncle, a large party of Standing Rock …
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The Italian-born trumpeter has been a Little Bighorn scapegoat. Trumpeter Giovanni Martini was the last white man to see Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer alive. He also became the first enlisted man to serve as a scapegoat for the catastrophe at the Little Bighorn. There was plenty of blame to go around after five companies …
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After two woodcutters decided to rob a train. Tulare County had a couple of good but relatively inexperienced deputy sheriffs in Earl Daggett and Victor Reed. On the night of March 19, 1896, the two lawmen, based in Visalia, California, got the surprise of their lives. They acquitted themselves well under fire and lived to …
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Remington Army and Navy Revolvers 1861-1888 by Donald L. Ware, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2007, $65. Colts were the first American revolvers produced, and they never really lost their place as the No. 1 large-caliber handguns—during the Civil War, on the Western frontier and even in the Hollywood West. But Remington six-shooters came …
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100 Oklahoma Outlaws, Gangsters, and Lawmen, 1839-1939 by Dan Anderson and Laurence Yadon, Pelican Publishing Co., Gretna, La., 2007, $16.95 paperback. On the occasion of Oklahoma’s 100th anniversary of statehood, it seems to have been natural for Dan Anderson and Laurence Yadon to compile a lively compendium of every resident—or, in a separate chapter, celebrity …
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The Texas Rangers: Vol. 1, Wearing the Cinco Peso 1821-1900 by Mike Cox, Forge (Tom Doherty Associates), New York, 2008, $25.95. For many years, Walter Prescott Webb’s 1935 The Texas Rangers needed updating, but that is certainly no longer the case. Among the historians who have taken second and third looks at those famous fighting …
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The Rise of the Centennial State: Colorado Territory, 1861-76 by Eugene H. Berwanger, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 2007, $40. The Pike’s Peak gold rush of 1859 brought an estimated 100,000 Anglo-American gold seekers to the frozen slopes of the Front Range in what was soon to be Colorado Territory. In 1865 only about 37,000 …
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State gunsmiths made rifles for killing the big beasts. On September 2, 1769, a small expedition of leatherjacket soldiers, missionaries and muleteers killed a large-but-lean grizzly bear on the shore of an ocean-side lake in Upper California about 80 miles north of today’s Santa Barbara. The half-starved band of 64 men led by Gaspar de …
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The Bowl of Gold still not empty. Cripple Creek, Colorado, has been labeled the greatest gold camp on earth. Millionaires were made from the ore load. It all happened in 1891 on a small patch of a cattle ranch on the south side of America’s mountain, Pikes Peak. Gold had actually been found in the …
The post Colorado’s Pikes Peak Heritage Center Takes more than a peek at Cripple Creek appeared first on HistoryNet.
Prospectors first discovered silver in 1873 and settled where several streams met to form the Animas River, 12 miles northeast of present-day Silverton, in Colorado’s San Juan County. Originally called Three Forks of the Animas, the mining community’s name was changed to Animas Forks by the Post Office in 1875. Colorado transportation magnate Otto Mears …
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Eva Evans had just buried her thieving fiancé, and her one-armed father was in jail waiting trial, when she performed in a blood-and-thunder melodrama about the two outlaws. On July 29, 1893, the San Francisco Examiner previewed a planned theatrical about outlaws Christopher Evans and John Sontag, whose exploits included dynamiting a Southern Pacific train …
The post Dynamite Stage Debut for a Train Robber’s Daughter appeared first on HistoryNet.
Judge Roy Bean picked the pockets of everyone who entered his barroom court in west Texas. The legendary saga of Roy Bean began the day he was hanged from a poplar tree in California. Bean had been jailed in San Diego for attempted murder after wounding a man in a February 1852 pistol duel, escaped …
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Wichita, Dodge City and Leadville employed a variety of novel tactics to keep gun-toting riffraff from disturbing the peace…sometimes the tactics actually worked. When Sam Botts, a recent addition to the Wichita police, tried to arrest a drunken road grader armed with a six-shooter on a hot July day in 1874, he was interrupted by …
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The West was wild, but plenty of public and private law agencies tried to tame it. Federal Marshals Town marshals and deputies are not to be confused with their federal namesakes. Appointed by the U.S. president, U.S. marshals enforced federal laws from districts that could be either in states or territories. Deputy U.S. marshals did …
The post The Long Arms of the Law appeared first on HistoryNet.
Settlers in places where lawmen were few and far between often enforced their own rules of justice. Justice was often a matter of self-help for settlers in the Old West. Take this small mid-1880s happening out in No Man’s Land, the hardscrabble country that would later become the Oklahoma Panhandle. When local badman Bill Williams …
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Although games could be lucrative, they were rarely honest. In the 1993 film Tombstone, Doc Holliday asks his pal Wyatt Earp, “Since when is faro a business?” Holliday follows up with the wry observation, “Only suckers buck the tiger; the odds are all on the house.” Catchy dialogue, but historically it would seem to miss …
The post Faro: One Business That Was Mainly Monkey Business appeared first on HistoryNet.
Houston supported them but not Lamar. In 1838 Texas President Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar wanted nothing less than to make Texans masters of their own house by clearing the republic of American Indians. A blood feud had already begun between Texas and the Comanche Nation. But now Lamar decided to force out a people the previous …
The post The Forced Expulsion of the Texas Cherokees appeared first on HistoryNet.
The Kansas frontiersman never became a living legend. William “Buffalo Bill” Cody truly was a frontiersman, scout and Indian fighter. But he became bigger than life as a showman thanks to newspapers, pulp fiction, dime novels, excellent promotion and his crowd-pleasing Wild West extravaganza. By the late 19th century, the name “Buffalo Bill” was recognized …
The post The First ‘Buffalo Bill’ Was Named William Mathewson, not Cody appeared first on HistoryNet.
Through the Eyes of his Daughter Eva. Chris Evans was a brutal, quick-tempered outlaw who robbed trains and never hesitated to spill blood. California newspapers delighted in running stories about him and his primary partner in crime, John Sontag. Chris Evans was also a devoted family man—a tender, loving father. Eva Evans saw Chris’ softer …
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The WWHA has broadened its Western horizons. In the world of research about outlaws and lawmen of the Old West, there has been division in recent years. Some individuals belonged to the National Association of Outlaw and Lawman History (NOLA). Others joined the Western Outlaw Lawman History Association (WOLA). Heck, some folks belonged to both …
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The post Audiobook Review| How Not to Get Rich: The Financial Misadventures of Mark Twain appeared first on HistoryNet.
Witnesses and participants in the defining moments of 19th-century American expansionism, John and Jessie Frémont maintained a marriage and an ideological vision ahead of its time. The 27-year-old blue-eyed explorer, fresh from an expedition to the American West, was the illegitimate son of a French Royalist émigré and a runaway Southern belle. The 15-year-old raven-haired …
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John Hancock signed his death warrant that day. In April 1897, John Hancock and Winifred “Winny” Myers, along with Myers’ 6-year-old son, set out from Perris, California, for Salt Lake City, Utah, in a miserable excuse for an outfit drawn by four inferior horses. One of their animals gave out at Daggett, California, but Hancock …
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John and Jessie went hand in hand with Western expansion. Sally Denton focuses on an early American power couple in her latest book, switching gears from writing about the Mormons to address the story of Manifest Destiny. Passion and Principle: John and Jessie Frémont, the Couple Whose Power, Politics and Love Shaped Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomsbury …
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The post Off and Running: America’s Growing Passion For Horse Racing Stayed Strong During the War appeared first on HistoryNet.
From the Gulf of Tonkin to the Mekong Delta, new technologies were launched during the Vietnam War
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Military outsourcing is making headlines, but it didn’t begin in Iraq. Private contractors played a key role in winning American independence. A frenzied shootout in a Baghdad intersection last September reportedly left 17 civilian bystanders dead. The shooters, providing security for a convoy of officials, turned out to be neither U.S. nor Iraqi military, insurgents …
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On December 23, 2007, Times The New York ran the headline “Hoover Planned Mass Jailings in 1950” over a story by Tim Weiner, author of last year’s bestselling Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Other news outlets picked up the story: A Scripps Howard columnist titled his recapitulation “Inexcusable Deeds of J. Edgar …
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“Stupendous…worth a voyage across the Atlantic.” Standing by giant blue-gray boulders perched precariously over a precipice, Thomas Jefferson gazed, awestruck, at the gap carved through the Blue Ridge Mountains by the cascading Shenandoah River, bonding with its big sister, the Potomac. It was 1783. Millions of visitors have experienced the view from Jefferson Rock in …
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It was David meets Goliath in 1904 when Ida Tarbell published her groundbreaking exposé The History of the Standard Oil Company. Tarbell spent years researching how John D. Rockefeller’s mammoth trust gained control of more than 80 percent of the U.S. oil market by the turn of the century. Her articles in McClure’s magazine grabbed …
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Carter’s Grove Gets New Lease on Life The Carter’s Grove plantation in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia was recently sold by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for $15.3 million, and some preservationists are saying that other failing house museums should pay strict attention. The foundation closed Carter’s Grove to the public in 2003, citing the …
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Smithsonian Folkways Ralph Rinzler Archives Jeff Place spends most of his waking hours communing with Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Lead Belly, Big Bill Broonzy and hundreds of regular folks whose voices and music were preserved for posterity decades ago by Folkways Records. The collection is part of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage’s …
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We Are All Americans, Pure and Simple: Theodore Roosevelt and the Myth of Americanism by Leroy G. Dorsey, University of Alabama Press, 280 pp., $32.50 Theodore Roosevelt was the first president to invite an African American—Booker T. Washington—to dine at the White House. Yet he also expressed doubts about whether blacks were capable “of assuming …
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The Long Pursuit: Abraham Lincoln’s Thirty-Year Struggle With Stephen Douglas for the Heart and Soul of America by Roy Morris Jr., Smithsonian Books, 254 pp., $24.95 When Abraham Lincoln squared off with Stephen Douglas in a series of seven debates in 1858, the two were vying for a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois. Lincoln lost …
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America’s Second Revolution: How George Washington Defeated Patrick Henry and Saved the Nation by Harlow Giles Unger, Wiley, 267 pp., $27.95 Patrick Henry, the greatest orator of his day, boycotted the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and marshaled a steady stream of high-flown rhetoric to voice his opposition to the efforts of George Washington and his …
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Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts, William Morrow, 512 pp., $26.95 After his hair-thin victory in the 1796 presidential election, John Adams sent his wife Abigail near-daily missives beseeching her to abandon the family farm in Quincy, Massachusetts, and come to Philadelphia to be by his side. “I never …
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A New World: England’s First View of America Yale Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. March 6-June 1 The British artist and explorer John White first sailed to North America in May 1577 as part of a Cathay Company expedition to search for precious metals and a northwest passage to China. The …
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Yankee Stadium faces the wrecking ball after decades of glory that helped define the American Century. For the first two decades of the 20th century, the New York Giants owned the hearts of baseball fans in Gotham. With fiery man- ager John McGraw at the helm, the Giants were the perennial powerhouse of the National …
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Rare oral histories of the Civil War reveal slaves held surprisingly mixed opinions of Marse Lincoln and their emancipation. On the eve of the Civil War one in seven people in the United States was a slave. Moreover, Africa was already a distant ancestral memory for these 4 million enslaved men, women and children, 99 …
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The oldest known work by a European artist in North America is a watercolor of a near-naked giant, his arm slung around a tiny fop in tights. The giant is chiseled, like a bodybuilder, and covered in tattoos. He wears bracelets and anklets made of berries; a fringe of beetle wings skirts his muscled thighs. …
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Our Father’s House George Washington’s monumental feats as the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and our nation’s first president are recounted time and again in historical chronicles, but his private aspirations are most vividly on display at the dream house he spent a lifetime building for himself: Mount Vernon. Washington was his own architect and …
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Melissa Harris-Lacewell says different perceptions of history separate blacks and whites. In the early 1960s, Robert Kennedy boldly predicted that in the not-too-distant future a black might be elected president of the United States. Such a prospect seemed far-fetched at the time, and even more so after the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders famously …
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Sioux Warrior Receives Posthumous Medal of Honor Master Sergeant Woodrow Wilson Keeble of North Dakota saved the lives of dozens of other U.S. soldiers in October 1951 when he mounted a one-man assault on three enemy machine gun nests during a battle in the rugged hills near Sangsan-ni, Korea. This spring, more than 50 years …
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Blackwater Pirates Although I did appreciate the information about privateers (“Pirates of the Revolution,” June 2008), I fail to see any connection whatsoever between the American Revolution and our current situation in Iraq. Pirates are pirates. Hired guns are hired guns. For the life of me, anyone who believes in our Constitution cannot possibly view …
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Moving Midway: A Southern Plantation in Transit directed by Godfrey Cheshire, Color, 98 minutes, In theaters Fall 2008 Talk about a family affair. In 2004 Godfrey Cheshire’s cousins, the Hintons, decide to literally uproot Midway, the family’s ancestral North Carolina mansion built in 1848, because Raleigh’s mall-riddled suburbs have noisily engulfed it. The notion naturally …
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The Ten-Cent Plague David Hajdu, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 448 pp., $26 A half-century ago, comic books were the subject of a fierce battle in the war on the First Amendment—a story that, in The Ten-Cent Plague, David Hajdu expertly brings back to light. Author of Positively 4th Street, a portrait of 1960s folk bohemia …
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The Execution of Willie Francis: Race, Murder, and the Search for Justice in the American South Gilbert King, Basic Civitas, 362 pp., $26 In 1946 Willie Francis, a 17-year-old African American, sat in an electric chair, about to die. The crime: He allegedly killed a white man in his hometown, St. Martinville, La.—and not just …
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Playing the Changes: Milt Hinton’s Life in Stories and Photographs Milt Hinton, with David Berger and Holly Maxson, Vanderbilt, 384 pp., 260 photos, $75 Milt Hinton spanned much jazz history. He also changed it: The master of the “walking” bass performed with Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong, and helped break the studio-musician color line. And …
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Baseball’s League of Nations: A Tribute to Native American Baseball Players Iroquois Indian Museum, Howes Cave, N.Y. Through December 31 Last August, when a 6-foot-2, 230-pound 21-year-old Winnebago Indian named Joba Chamberlain first stepped onto the pitcher’s mound for the New York Yankees in a road game against the Toronto Blue Jays, he dazzled millions …
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