A Brief History On March 3, 1776, the Continental Navy and Continental Marines, the forces that would become the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps, conducted the first amphibious operation in US military history when a raid on Nassau in the Bahamas was conducted, known as The Raid on Nassau or sometimes called The Battle of Nassau. Digging Deeper Marines in general and the United States Marine Corps in particular are a military force of fighting men (and today, women as well) that are considered a ‘naval’ military service and work closely with the Navy.  Marines are used…

A Brief History On March 2, 1657, the city of Tokyo, Japan, then known as Edo, suffered a catastrophic fire that lasted 3 days and killed 100,000 Japanese people, a death toll greater than either of the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Digging Deeper The carnage caused by the Great Fire of Meireki (or sometimes known as the Furisode Fire) combined to destroy about 60 to 70% of the buildings in Edo.  The legendary cause of the fire was a priest attempting to burn a cursed kimono that had been owned by 3 girls, one after…

A Brief History On March 1, 1953, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin suffered an alleged stroke that led to his death on March 5, 1953 at the age of 74.  Although the official reason the brutal dictator died was a common medical malady, high blood pressure leading to a cerebral hemorrhage complicated by a stomach hemorrhage as well, speculation that he may have been murdered persists to this day.  (You may note that there are various spellings of Stalin’s name, the one we have used is the Anglicized version.) Digging Deeper Born Ioseb Jughashvilli in Gori, Georgia of the Russian Empire…

A Brief History On February 28, 1939, the Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition accidentally included a goofy meaningless word among the thousands of legitimate words found in the esteemed text. Digging Deeper When it was pointed out that the apparently new word, “dord,” had been included in the dictionary, defined as “density,” an investigation ensued.  The explanation was that the entry that should have been included was simply a capital D, followed by the word “or” followed by a lower-case d.  That is, it should have looked like this: D or d. Chemists, engineers, physicists and the like use…

A Brief History On February 27, 1902, a British firing squad carried out the execution of convicted war criminal, Australian Lt. Harry “Breaker” Morant.  A rare thing indeed for the British Army to prosecute one of their own for war crimes in those days, Morant and fellow soldier Lt. Peter Handcock stood accused of the murders of several South African (Boer) prisoners of war and civilians. Digging Deeper The Second Boer War between the British and Dutch settlers of South Africa (Boers) started in October of 1899 and was near its end when Morant and Handcock were tried and executed. …