Author: Major Dan

Major Dan

Major Dan 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.

A Brief History On June 10, 1942, and again on June 10, 1944, the German army committed atrocities in Czechoslovakia (Lidice), France (Oradour-sur-Glane), and Greece (Distomo, Boeotia) in separate incidents.  Slaughtering or massacring innocent civilians or prisoners of war was a sadly not uncommon practice of one of history’s most brutal regimes.  Here we list 10 such examples of how rotten the Nazis really were, and thus why there should be no romanticizing about their “glory days.”  Indeed, with good reason, multiple Nazis appear on the list of most evil people in history due to their many atrocities.  Most of…

Read More

A Brief History On June 10, 1990, in an incredible tale of survival and an equally improbable freak accident, a British Airways pilot was sucked out of the windscreen of his jetliner and lived to tell about it. Digging Deeper Flight 5390 from Birmingham had taken off and was heading for Malaga, Spain (a beautiful resort town on the Spanish Costa del Sol) when the unthinkable happened.  Without warning, the left panel of the windscreen blew off the plane and the captain was suddenly sucked out through the missing panel. Captain Lancaster had taken the jet to over 17,000 feet…

Read More

A Brief History On June 9, 1856, 500 Mormons left Iowa and headed for Salt Lake City, Utah.  So eager to leave the religious persecution behind them, they started their trek on foot pulling 2 wheeled handcarts! Digging Deeper If you are familiar with the stories of Mormons walking to Utah and pulling handcarts, you might not know that only about 10 percent of the Latter Day Saints (what Mormons actually are called, or LDS) that traveled to Utah before 1868 made the trip on foot with handcarts.  The other 90 percent had horse, mule, or oxen drawn wagons. Although…

Read More

A Brief History On June 9, 1667, the Dutch Navy handed the British Royal Navy its worst defeat in its history in what is known as the Raid on the Medway.  The Dutch burned 13 British ships, including 3 of the largest (“capital ships”) and towed away 2 more large ships, including the Flagship of the Royal Navy, the HMS Royal Charles.  This raid was done in England, far up the river Thames and then up the river Medway at Chatham.  Bold raids such as this are sometimes spectacularly successful, and sometimes not so much.  Raids are surprise attacks of short duration,…

Read More

A Brief History On June 9, 1959, the USS George Washington was launched, the first ballistic missile carrying submarine, creating a new class of nuclear delivery weapons that would virtually guarantee mutual destruction in time of nuclear war.  Here we list 10 such milestones in modern  (19th through 21st Centuries) weaponry that can be considered “game changers.”  (The order listed is not necessarily by importance.) Digging Deeper 10. Ballistic Missile Submarine, 1959. Almost impossible to keep track of an entire enemy submarine fleet, either side in the Cold War would be subject to a surprise attack with much shorter notice…

Read More