Douglas Bader was born on Feb. 21, 1910 to an upper class British family. His father was wounded in WWI and died in 1922. Douglas went to fine schools, but was not focused on academics. He was much more interested in athletics like rugby and cricket where he excelled. He Read more…
Henry Flipper was born a slave in 1856. He attended Atlanta University until he got an appointment to West Point. He joined four other blacks who were already there. They underwent harassment from white cadets. No white spoke to them (“the silent treatment”) and none befriended them. He became the Read more…
In 1855, Senator Jefferson Davis got Congress to appropriate $30,000 to purchase camels in the Middle East for use by the Army in the West. The theory was that camels would do better than mules in transporting supplies in the arid area. 33 camels were purchased at an average Read more…
Isaac Woodard was an honorably discharged WWII veteran. He had volunteered for the Army in 1942 and served in a labor battalion in the Pacific Theater. On Feb. 12, 1946, he was riding a Greyhound bus back to his home in North Carolina. When the bus stopped at a Read more…
“The Birth of a Nation” was the first major motion picture and is both famous and infamous. It was directed by D.W. Griffith. The cinematography is astounding. The film features “panoramic long shots, iris effects, still shots, night photography, panning shots, and color tinting”. The burning of Atlanta has surreal Read more…
Stanislov Petrov was born on September 7, 1939. His father had been a fighter pilot and his mother was a nurse. Naturally, he went into the military. On Sept. 26, 1983, he was on duty in a bunker near Moscow. Lt. Col. Petrov was in charge of the nuclear Read more…
Andree de Jongh was 23 years-old when Belgium was conquered by the Germans. She was a nurse at the time. Since her personal hero was Edith Cavell, a nurse who helped Allied soldiers escape from the German occupation in WWI, she decided to join the resistance. She and her Read more…
The Holocaust resulted in the deaths of at least 6 million Jews over a period of 6 years. But the worst single event in WWII has to be the “Rape of Nanking (Nanjing)”. After the Japanese army captured Shanghai, it moved on to Nanking. The Chinese army barely put Read more…
Gouverneur Morris was one of America’s Founding Fathers. He was called the “Penman of the Constitution” because he wrote the Preamble. It was he that led off the document with “We the People…” He was a great man who suffered bodily throughout his life. As a boy, half of Read more…
The US began Operation Rolling Thunder in 1966. This was the bombing of North Vietnam, mainly by F-105 fighter bombers. The Thunderchief (Thud) was a durable plane which came in handy because it was targeted by anti-aircraft guns, SAM missiles, and MiG-21’s. The North Vietnamese had most of the Read more…