Category: History

Prior to the war in Afghanistan, the conflict in Vietnam was the longest in United States history. And on April 1, 1970, Green Beret medic Gary Beikirch showed incredible bravery during an attack on his Dak Seang A-Camp. He was exposing himself repeatedly to enemy fire to treat wounded comrades, despite his own serious wounds […]

 The United States Army on March 29, 1911, adopted arguably the greatest combat pistol in history. The M1911 is a single-action, semi-automatic, magazine-fed, recoil-operated pistol chambered for the .45 ACP cartridge.  The ubiquitous M1911 served as the standard-issue sidearm for the United States Armed Forces for over 75 years, from 1911 to 1986. The pistol, […]

Situated in the northwestern portion of South Vietnam, along the border with Laos, lies the A Shau Valley.  At 25 miles long and one mile wide, A Shau the valley consists of tall and thick elephant grass flanked on either side by steep mountain ranges, dense with jungle, that rise between 3,000 and 6,000 feet. […]

Hannah Duston, also alternatively referred to as Dustin, Dustan, and Durstan in early Colonial records, was a Puritan mother of nine children who was taken captive along with her infant daughter by Abenaki Indians from Canada during King William’s War. The Abenaki had taken her during a raid on Haverhill, Massachusetts on March 15, 1697, […]

The expansion of Islam into Asia was solidified with the formation of the Ottoman Empire in the 13th century. This vast empire helped the spread of Islam throughout the world. The Ottomans were extremely tolerant of most religions at the time. Also, much like the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire was dedicated to a jihad against […]

Ceremonies in both Poland and Jerusalem marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the death camp run by the Nazis that was synonymous with the Holocaust. Over a million people were murdered there between 1940 and 1945, the vast majority of them Jews. Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Russian […]

Fears of the coronavirus are affecting the travel plans of over 46 million people worldwide and Chinese officials, where the outbreak started, are worried that the disease is spreading.  China’s President Xi Jinping stressed the urgency of controlling the outbreak, which is confirmed to have infected hundreds just since Friday. The number of infected people, […]

Today is the birthday of Sterling Hayden, he would have been 103 years old today. Most people when they hear his name think of the crooked cop, Captain McCloskey in “The Godfather”. Working with a rival faction of Mafiosi, Hayden met his end when Michael Corleone shot him in a restaurant. He was also outstanding […]

British Air Ministry engineer William Godfray De Lisle came up with the concept of an integrally suppressed rifle while working at home in 1942. He created a prototype chambered in  .22 caliber and based on a Browning semi-automatic rifle to hunt small animals for food. After much success, he realized the extreme quiet of the […]

Over 40-years ago, Iranian militants seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took 98 hostages. The majority of them would be held for 444 days until they would be freed just before Ronald Reagan became President.  The events that unfolded during the crisis would put in motion the creation of the United States Special […]

After the forces of Hitler’s Nazi Germany overran most of Europe in the summer of 1940, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered that the military create a force that could carry out raids against Nazi-occupied Europe. “Enterprises must be prepared, with specially-trained troops of the hunter class, who can develop a reign of terror down […]

As anyone who has read about the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) and SOE (Special Operations Executive) of World War II knows, Virginia Hall is one of the true rock stars of the clandestine services for both Britain and the United States.  In the outstanding book, “A Woman of No Importance,” Sonia Purnell tells a […]