A Brief History On November 29, 1987, Korean Air Lines Flight 858 exploded over the Andaman Sea, downing the jet liner and killing all 115 people aboard the plane, mostly people from South Korea. The cause of the deadly blast was a bomb planted by North Korean “agents,” basically state sponsored terrorists, at the behest of the son of North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung and future dictator of North Korea himself, Kim Jong-il. Normally, such a state sponsored act of terrorism could easily be the casus belli for declaring war against the country that perpetrated such an outrage against humanity,…
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A Brief History On November 27, 1942, the French Navy under the direction of Admiral Auphan scuttled a large part of the French ships and submarines in port at Toulon, France, in order to keep these valuable assets out of the hands of the German navy, known as the Kriegsmarine. After Germany had rolled over France in 1940 and the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated to Britain, the defeated French sued for peace and found their country divided between Occupied France and nominally “independent” Vichy France in the South of the country. The Vichy French, so named for the de…
A Brief History On November 25, 1947, the United States was in the glow of having decisively won World War II and stepping up to become the major economic and military power in the world, the only nation with nuclear bombs. But. And this is a big “but,” and not the kind I sit on! The Soviet Union (USSR) had built a gigantic military force during World War II and proved to be a problematic ally after the war by scooping up as much territory and installing as many puppet governments as they could. The avowed goal of Soviet communists…
A Brief History On November 21, 1967, the American commander of US forces in Vietnam, General William Westmoreland, made the assertion, “I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.” He was wrong. Really, really, wrong. As many times as we have heard stirring, prophetic, or highly insightful military related quotes, sometimes military people or politicians make a profound statement about martial events or devices and they turn out to be wrong. Previously we discussed “10 Famous Military Quotations” and “10 More Famous Military Quotations.” Today we discuss military related quotes that…
A Brief History On November 18, 2018, just after the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, we look back over the past almost 62 years to take a look at things we find commonplace today that did not exist when I was born (January 1957). We also look at things that were common then or in the past that no longer exist. As you can guess from the title of this article, we have examined these items, new and passé, a few times before. (See “Things That Did Not Exist (Or Were Different) on July 1,…