Military History

Many of our readers fought in this war and don’t need a rundown of events, but as the days stretch on, it draws further and further away. Many of today’s youth may be too young to remember — today’s 18-year-olds were only three years old at the beginning of the war. On March 20, 2003, […]

You know it when you see it, and you probably see it several times a day if you’re driving pretty much anywhere in America. Affixed on top of the flagpole, above the flag itself, stands a golden sphere, decoratively topping it all off. The golden colored or bronze looking orb is not at the end […]

When people think of the loss of life in a war, they generally think of soldiers sustaining traumatic injuries. However, conditions on the battlefield are anything but healthy, and disease has often inflicted serious casualties on forces that scramble through months of jungle mountains, or scrape through muddy trenches for weeks on end, and sometimes […]

Imagine you’re a German soldier during WWII, just for a moment. It’s nearing the end of December, and you’re in a coastal town in far west Norway — England is somewhere across the icy waters. It’s freezing cold, and British boats are closing in. Troops are about to charge the garrison, and the first landing […]

March 9, 1862:  It was the second year of the American Civil War, and the confederacy had acquired a frigate by the name of the U.S.S. Merrimack. They altered the ship, heavily armoring it and adding significantly more firepower, turning it into a formidable ironclad ship, the C.S.S. Virginia. The boat absolutely pummeled wooden Union […]

It was March 5, 1770. Boston was a central shipping town, important in the eyes of the British as they moved goods to and from the eastern coast of the New World. It was night, and many colonists had rallied together near the Customs House in town and started throwing snowballs at a British soldier […]

There is a kind of mythological component when people talk about invading Russia in the winter. A lot of people imagine Hitler, rashly deciding to invade the northern country during the coldest time of year, just as Napoleon had, and their asses getting handed to them by both the terrible cold and the Russians who […]

On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps by Executive Order 10924. Coming out of WWII and the Korean War, the idea of peaceful initiatives across the world was intriguing to many. Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut proposed “full-time missionaries of democracy” that would be sent to third world nations struggling […]

February 27, 1942 — The USS Langley was sailing off the Indonesian coast with her escort anti-submarine vessels in tow. A Japanese reconnaissance plane spotted them and reported back to their command. By mid-day, the U.S. ships were being bombarded by Japanese bombers — Mitsubishi Navy Type 1 attack bombers, to be precise, known to […]

Turn on the TV or fire up your phone. You’ll find several narratives telling you how the world is spiraling out of control, full of racist cops and mindless thugs, terrorists pining to destroy the west and bombs that seem to be decimating every square inch of the Middle East. Eastern Asia is rife with […]

On Feb 23, 1945, the United States Marines and a Navy Corpsman raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi in Iwo Jima. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer for the Associated Press, would snap the picture that would define the U.S.’s involvement in the Pacific for WWII and become a symbol for American veterans for generations to […]

21 February, 1916 — German and French armies go head to head, starting in the early morning. Lead erupted from the barrel of a Langer Max siege and coastal-defense weapon, firing 15 inch (38 cm) rounds into French positions. The first building to take a hit would be a French cathedral, and the firing of […]