Browsing: Military

A Brief History On January 23, 1795, one of the most unusual battles in history took place when a force of French cavalry galloped across the frozen Zuiderzee to capture 14 Dutch ships and seize 850 guns (cannon). Known as The Battle of Texel, or otherwise known as The Capture of the Dutch Fleet at Den Helder, the action took place during The War of the First Coalition, one of a series of wars that started with the French Revolution and ended with The War of the Seventh Coalition when Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at Waterloo in 1915. Digging Deeper…

A Brief History On January 22, 1917, President of the United States Woodrow Wilson called upon the warring European nations to end the Great War (World War I) in a “peace without victory.”  At this stage of the war, the major combatant nations had invested so many lives and so much national treasure that to quit without victory was political suicide for the leaders.  Wilson, with the US still neutral at that point, was clearly wasting his breath.  Wilson’s plea is just one of many times someone made an effort at peace despite having virtually no chance at actually gaining…

A Brief History On January 19, 2018, Texans celebrate Confederate Heroes Day, while in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi Robert E. Lee Day is celebrated.  In 2017 the United States was torn by protests and counter protests, notably leading to violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the subject of removing Confederate statues and monuments from public areas.  Previously, campaigns to remove Confederate flags from public places resulted in South Carolina becoming the last state to stop flying the “Stars and Bars” over its capital (2015).  Americans seem torn between honoring their ancestors and erasing every trace of what is deemed…

A Brief History On January 17, 1941, French colonial naval forces engaged the naval forces of Siam (Thailand after 1948) during the Franco-Thai War, a smaller war within the larger conflagration that was World War II.  The French soundly defeated the Thai force, leading to negotiations and an end to the War via a Japanese brokered ceasefire on January 31, 1941. Digging Deeper Prior to World War II, the French colony of French Indochina (mainly what is now Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) included land claimed by Thailand.  (The Thai people always called their country the English equivalent of “Thailand,” while…

A Brief History On January 16, 2001, President Bill Clinton, in one of his final remaining acts as President of the United States, posthumously awarded former President Theodore Roosevelt the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor in the United States.  Roosevelt was given the award for leading a charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba during the Spanish-American War in 1898.  Roosevelt thus became the only US president to have earned a Medal of Honor, although given the century plus between the action and the award, one must wonder if the award was given for political and publicity reasons. …