A Brief History On June 6, 1822, a Canadian fur trapper “voyageur” was accidentally shot in the stomach with a musket, leaving him with a hole that healed open, leading to extensive study of the human digestive tract. Digging Deeper A French-Canadian woodsman, St. Martin was 20 years old when the musket shot him at close range at a fur trading post on Mackinac Island. The local US Army doctor, surgeon Dr. William Beaumont attended to the terrible wound that was expected by all observers to prove fatal. Instead, the wound healed into a fistula, an open hole through St.…
Author: Major Dan
Major Dan
Major Daniel Zar is a retired veteran of the United States Marine Corps. He served during the Cold War and has traveled to many countries around the world. Prior to his military service, he graduated from Cleveland State University, having majored in sociology. Following his military service, he worked as a police officer eventually earning the rank of captain prior to his retirement.
Read More
A Brief History On June 5, 1829, the British ship, HMS Pickle, a 5 gun schooner, captured an armed slave ship, the Voladora, off the coast of Cuba. This vessel was not the first British ship named “Pickle,” and in fact, it was the third British Navy ship with that name. Indeed, there have been 8 Royal Navy ships with that goofy name! With all the cool and bad ass sounding names you could give a warship, why settle for some goofy name? Well, there are a bunch of goofy named warships, and here we list 10 of them. (Our…
A Brief History On June 4, 1942, the Battle of Midway began with Admiral Nagumo of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordering an airstrike on the US held island of Midway in the Central Pacific. Flush with victory after victory, the powerful Japanese task force expected another rousing victory on the road to defeating the United States, but “you can’t always get what you want!” Digging Deeper The Japanese took America by surprise on December 7, 1941, with a crippling blow struck at the Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, quickly followed up by equally devastating strikes against other…
A Brief History On June 3, 1969, off the coast of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, an Australian aircraft carrier, the HMAS Melbourne, hit the port side of the US destroyer, USS Evans, cutting the smaller ship in half. Digging Deeper In the early morning darkness at 3 am (0300 hours) the ships were running without lights when the carrier changed course for air operations. Though the message was sent to the USS Evans to take up position as rescue destroyer (traveling behind the carrier), the order was misinterpreted and the destroyer crossed in front of the turning carrier,…
A Brief History On June 2, 1835, American showman and huckster Phineas T. Barnum began his first tour of the US with his circus, later called “The Greatest Show on Earth,” and then “Barnum and Bailey’s Circus,” “Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth,” and finally “Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus.” Digging Deeper The legacy of perhaps America’s greatest showman of all time finally went out of business on May 21, 2017, when the last performance of Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus ended at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York. Barnum ran a variety of businesses…