Browsing: Military

A Brief History On March 5, 1836, Samuel Colt formed the gun-manufacturing company that would produce the pistols “that won the West.”  We have already written about Mr. Colt and his innovative and successful revolver, but this time around, we are going to discuss the problems with it. Digging Deeper Colt created his invention when percussion caps were replacing flintlock ignition systems, and the percussion cap is what made a revolving cylinder firearm practical.  When relying on flintlock ignition, powder could easily fall out of the individual pan or chain fire, with all cylinders going off at once.  (This could…

A Brief History On March 1, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, returned to France from exile on the island of Elba to reclaim his empire.  Of course, his great comeback only lasted about 100 days, but in that time he reshook Europe.  Other people, teams and companies have also made impressive comebacks from near defeat, death, ruin or other calamities.  Here we list 10 of those that rank among the greatest.   Digging Deeper 10. John Travolta, 1994. After becoming a teen idol on television and having experienced success with movies such as Grease, Saturday Night Fever and Urban…

A Brief History On February 28, 1893, the United States Navy made an enormous step toward eventually ruling the seas by launching its first ever battleship commensurate with those of other great naval powers.  Though the USS Indiana BB-1 was launched on this date, she would not be commissioned until 2 years later. Digging Deeper Designed for coastal defense, the Indiana was not intended to throw her weight around the world as her decks were not designed to take heavy seas in the open ocean.  About 351 feet long and with a beam of 69 feet, she did not have the size or proportions of…

A Brief History On February 26, 1935, the militant German nationalist leader Adolf Hitler defied the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and ordered the reestablishment of the German Air Force, known as the Luftwaffe. Digging Deeper Hitler and his Nazi buddies had plotted this for some time, disguising pilot training as lessons to fly gliders, something allowed by the treaty.  As German industry developed war planes, the ruse that these planes were civilian craft was used as a cover story. German pilots got their first taste of combat flying in the Condor Legion of “volunteers” during the Spanish Civil…

A Brief History On February 25, 1336, the 4,000 defenders of the medieval Lithuanian fortress of Pilénai thought they had no other choice but to make the horrible decision to kill themselves and their families after torching and destroying everything they had of value to deny their Teutonic besiegers the spoils of victory and the opportunity to kill or enslave them. Digging Deeper The number of women and children sacrificed is unknown, but even just the number of defenders, recorded at 4,000, is more than enough to rank as history’s largest mass suicide, eclipsing the 900+ dead at Masada in 37-31 B.C. and the 900+…