Browsing: Military

A Brief History On June 17, 1932, 17,000 United States military veterans of World War I and 25,000 of their friends and family gathered in Washington, D.C. to demand early payment of their service certificate war bonuses.  Although the bonuses were not due to be paid until 1945, the Great Depression had hit the United States and these veterans were floundering financially.  General Douglas MacArthur, chief of staff of the Army, personally led US troops to forcibly drive away his fellow veterans, even though future 5 star general and president, Maj. Dwight Eisenhower (serving as an aide to MacArthur) counseled…

A Brief History On June 13, 2016, we ask if calls for de-militarizing police should be put on hold?  After the anti-police hysteria following police related killings of black (in this article we will use this term to be in consonance with “Black Lives Matter?) in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore, Maryland (as well as New York and Cleveland), many naïve people called for the “de-militarization of police.”  Led by no less than President Barack Obama, who declared his intention to keep military surplus equipment out of the hands of police, the reactionary response has been shown in graphic detail to…

A Brief History On June 11, 323 BC, one of History’s greatest conquerors and generals died at the age of 32, not on the battlefield where he had spent so much time putting his life in danger, but in bed in the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon. Digging Deeper The facts surrounding the death of Alexander the Great are somewhat muddled for so great a personage, but the reality is that the written historical accounts we have of the Macedonian King date from many decades after his death.  How much of his legacy is fact and how much is…

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…

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,…