On April 20, 1918, the greatest ace of the Great War shot down his 79th and 80thenemy aircraft. One day later, he was dead. Manfred Von Richthofen was thirty-six at the time. The Red Baron was one of the most famous persons in the world. On April 21, he Read more…
Did you know an American President survived an assassination by a swamp rabbit? It happened on April 20, 1979. President Jimmy Carter was fishing in a flat-bottomed bottom alone while on vacation in Plains, Georgia. As he told a reporter later, a swamp rabbit swam out towards the boat Read more…
Paul Revere was a well-known silversmith in Boston. He was also a spy and courier for the Sons of Liberty. It was not a secret that the British were interested in the munitions stored in Concord, but when Dr. Joseph Warren acquired intelligence about when the troops were marching Read more…
In honor of the birth of one of the great Robber Barons, here is my favorite anecdote about J.P. Morgan. He was born on April 17, 1837. J.P. Morgan had a skin condition that caused his nose to be large and ugly. He was self-conscious about this and there is Read more…
She was born on August 13, 1860 in a log cabin to a poor farm family in Ohio. Her name was Phoebe Anne Moses. Her sisters called her Annie and later she took the last name Oakley after a neighboring town. Her father died at age 6 and she was Read more…
It was supposed to be a routine reconnaissance mission in support of an American assault on a Viet Cong stronghold. But the “stronghold” was My Lai and what the helicopter crew saw was not a battle, but a massacre. The captain of the OH-23 Raven helicopter was Hugh Thompson, Read more…
The two aviators ran to their planes and took off, they landed heroes. The day was April 14, 1918. For Lt. Douglas Campbell, it was the culmination of a dream to serve his country in battle. Campbell, the son of famous astronomer William Campbell, had dropped out of Harvard Read more…
The bugle sounded, followed by the Rebel Yell. What followed was the most infamous massacre of the Civil War. In March, 1864 Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest launched a cavalry raid into western Kentucky and Tennessee. One of his targets was Fort Pillow, located on the Mississippi River near Read more…
In March, 2004, four military contractors were killed in Fallujah, Iraq. When their bodies were burned and hung from a bridge, the Pentagon decided it was time to clean out the city. Operation Phantom Fury was planned as a massive effort by the Marines to go street by street, Read more…
After three days without food or water (or bathroom facilities), the two men emerged from the wood pile and began their journey to freedom. Rudolf Vrba (19 years old) and Alfred Wetzler (26 years old) were inmates in Auschwitz. Both men were obsessed with bringing the true story of Read more…