Russia
The siege of Poltava was not going well. It was June 17, 1709 and for six weeks an army under King Charles XII of Sweden had been besieging the fortress town near the Vorskla River in the Ukraine. Read more
Russia
From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more
Russia
When American soldiers landed in France in June 1944 as part of the great Allied crusade to liberate Europe, they were well trained, fully equipped, and brimming with confidence. Read more
Russia
The officers huddled in a candlelit cellar in an abandoned farmhouse midway between the Oder River and Berlin. Read more
Russia
The year 1943 began badly for the German Army on the Eastern Front. After a great struggle at Stalingrad, German Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus surrendered himself and his Sixth Army on January 31. Read more
Russia
Napoleon had occasional health problems before 1810. He seems to have experienced seizures one or two times, episodes that resembled epilepsy, although most medical historians feel that he did not have the disease—at least not a classic version of it. Read more
Russia
In 1942, careworn Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler lamented to his military intimates at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia, “If I had known that there were so many of them, I would have had second thoughts about invading!” Read more
Russia
On the morning of September 14, 1854, an Anglo-French fleet arrived off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula in the Black Sea. Read more
Russia
Anticipating the inevitable war with the Ottoman Empire, the Russian government approved creation of a military formation recruited from native Bulgarian volunteers. Read more
Russia
In the summer of 1875, the Christian Slavic populations of Bosnia and Herzegovina rose up in rebellion against their Muslim Ottoman Turkish rulers in response to high taxes and depredations by the local Turkish administration. Read more
Russia
Wu Hsu was having trouble sleeping. As the taotai, or mayor, of Shanghai, Wu was charged with the ultimate welfare of China’s greatest cosmopolitan city. Read more
Russia
Not all World War II heroes were men or women. Some were four-legged, hoofed, or winged. They included horses and mules, elephants, and dogs as well as more exotic animals such as bats, camels, reindeer, and pigeons. Read more
Russia
During the summer of 1802, Europe was at peace for the first time in 13 years. The Treaty of Amiens (March 27, 1802), had ended what would later be seen as the opening round of the Napoleonic Wars. Read more
Russia
By the late 1870s, Turkey, the so-called “Sick Man of Europe,” was in terminal decline. While Sultan Abdul Hamid sequestered himself in his palatial compound through paranoid fear of an assassination, the Ottoman Empire was tearing itself apart. Read more
