Browsing: Military

A Brief History On May 11, 1862, the CSA ironclad, CSS Virginia, was scuttled in the James River to avoid capture by Union forces. The Virginia had formerly been the USS Merrimac and had fought the USS Monitor in the first battle of ironclad armored ships.  Over its long and illustrious history, the US Navy has lost a variety of vessels, and here we list some of the most famous of those losses. Digging Deeper 10. Bonhomme Richard, 1779. Starting life as a French merchant ship named Duc de Duras built in 1765, she was given to the fledgling US Navy to fight the…

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A Brief History On May 10, 1941, Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, third in command of Nazi Germany to Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring, some of history’s most evil people, parachuted into Scotland in an attempt to get Britain to make peace with Germany. Digging Deeper Nazi Number 3 was a far cry from the mythical Aryan “superman” that the Nazi propaganda machine depicted, but then again, so were the other top party members.  (We wonder why the German people did not notice that their leadership was less than the so called “Nordic” ideal espoused by the Nazi party.) Although Hess…

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A Brief History On May 10, 1865, Union troops ambushed, shot and captured infamous Confederate raider William Quantrill.  Quantrill had terrorized the Union and Union sympathizers during the Civil War (not so “civil!”) and was perhaps the most famous of the “Bushwhackers” as these guerilla raiders were known.  Quantrill died 4 weeks later at a Union prison camp, paralyzed from the chest down.  He was only 27 years old. Digging Deeper Throughout history, men and women have conducted raids, and some have become famous or infamous for their raids.  Here we list 10 of the most notorious.  (Note: The order…

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A Brief History On May 8, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally to the allies and ceased to exist as a state. You may count Germany invading Poland in 1939 as the start of World War II (also known as The Second World War) or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1937, but in any case most people would guess correctly that World War II cost more lives than any other war in history. (Please note that total lives lost in each war are also debatable, and the list can be rearranged somewhat depending on your analysis of the sources.) The…

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A Brief History On May 7, 2004, American inventor and businessman Nicholas Berg, only 26 years old, was beheaded by Islamic terrorists in Iraq, a barbaric event made all the worse because the terrorists posted a video of the murder on the internet, to the chagrin of horrified Americans.  The fact that he was Iraq for humanitarian reasons made the murder that much harder to understand. Digging Deeper Nick Berg the inventor of a construction brick he called “Bovl Block” and owner of a construction company, was traveling overseas to teach poor countries how to make his bricks so they…

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