Browsing: Military

A Brief History On June 4, 1855, Major Henry C. Wayne got on board the USS Supply in New York Harbor and headed to the Mediterranean Sea to procure camels (29 of the Dromedary or one-hump variety and 2 of the Bactrian or two-hump kind) for use by the US Army in the Western United States. In 1848, Wayne had conducted a more detailed follow-up study to the 1836 report submitted to the Army by Major George Crossman who had recommended the US Army acquire camels as pack animals for hot weather environments. These reports and recommendations went nowhere until…

A Brief History On June 3, 1861, in the first organized land battle (barely a battle in reality) of the American Civil War, the Union Army with 3,000 men routed an untrained force of 800 Confederate volunteers in what it now West Virginia at Philippi, a small town that today has only about 3,000 residents. Touted as a huge victory for the Union, the “battle” would be fairly inconsequential except for the wounding of 2 Confederate soldiers that both required battlefield amputations, one of which fashioned his own homemade artificial leg that proved so successful the wounded soldier founded a…

A Brief History On June 1, 1879, the so-called “Napoleon IV” died in the unlikely service of the British Army fighting Zulu warriors in what is now South Africa. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the only child of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Digging Deeper Born in Paris in 1856, the little Louis-Napoléon had the distinction of having the Pope as his Godfather at his baptism! His Godmother was Josephine, Queen of Sweden, the granddaughter of Napoleon I’s first wife, Josephine. In spite of this auspicious beginning, the young Bonaparte was fated to never succeed his father on the throne of Imperial…

A Brief History On May 29, 1935, the brainchild of Willy Messerschmitt, the Bf-109, made its first flight. The most produced fighter of all time, the Germans built 33,984 of them, while Czechoslovakia and Spain also built a few hundred more until 1958. The main German fighter of the pre-war period and early in the war, it was to be superseded by the more modern and more heavily armed FW-190, but the ease of manufacture and maintenance kept the Bf-109 in production during the entire war. Constantly updated and refined, the aging airframe remained competitive with allied fighters throughout the…

A Brief History On May 26, 1908, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made when the Masjed Soleyman strike was made in Southwest Persia, the country now known as Iran. The fact that the Middle East is so rich in petroleum oil resources has been an overwhelming factor in the history of the 20th and 21st Centuries and will continue to be of monumental importance until such time as human civilization drastically reduces its dependence on fossil fuels. Today we look at 10 of the dates in the 20th Century when events of great importance…