Frontiersman Daniel Morgan

The lieutenant had reached the end of his tether. It was time to cut this impudent American wagoner down to size with the flat of his sword. Read more

World Airlines Flight 253: Hostage of the Soviet Union

Nineteen-year-old U.S. Army Specialist E5 James Griffith wasn’t particularly nervous when he boarded Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 at McChord Air Base in Tacoma, Washington, on June 30, 1968. Read more

Sack of Constantinople

Dawn broke clear and hot over Constantinople on July 17, 1203.

All manner of war machines were clustered around the Latin crusaders’ fortified camp on a hill where the Monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian was located. Read more

Union Army Engineers

The Union Army’s ambitious Overland Campaign began on May 4, 1864. It was the fourth year of the Civil War, and Lt. Read more

Race to Victory

Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt of the Royal Navy was in a grave predicament on August 28, 1914. His force was near the German base at Heligoland Bight. Read more

Divine Winds Triumphant

In the early 13th century the legendary Mongol Genghis Khan laid the foundations for the greatest land empire in history. Read more

The 1903 Springfield Rifle’s Storied Military History

On November 17, 1915, Major Smedley Butler and a small force of U.S. Marines approached the old French bastion of Fort Riviere in Haiti. Read more

Rosie the Riveter: The Real Women Behind the Iconic Image

The iconic image of a woman in overalls, her hair tied up in a bandana, and flexing her bicep below the headline, “We Can Do It,” is one of the most recognizable images from World War II. Read more

When Ivan Became Terrible

Ivan IV Vasilyevich, first czar of all the Russians, has gone down as one of history’s most notorious despots, infamous for the terrors he carried out among his subjects. Read more

Death at the Crossroads

An unrelenting rain soaked the gray-clad troops of Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s reinforced division of Confederate soldiers on the morning of March 30, 1865. Read more

Mauled in Laos

The South Vietnamese rangers huddled in their trenches and bunkers at landing zone Ranger North throughout the day of February 19, 1971, as mortar shells crashed inside the perimeter. Read more

Grand Clash on the Chesapeake

Under sunny skies, favorable winds pushed Captain Mark Robinson and the 74-gun ship of the line Shrewsbury on September 5, 1781, toward a stormy encounter with an old enemy. Read more

Americans in Paris

Almost every soldier on western European battlefront wanted to get to Paris. Once it was liberated on August 25, 1944, it became a mecca for Allied soldiers on leave who filled the streets, bars, and historic buildings, enjoying a brief respite from the war. Read more

“God Has Been Our Shield”

The regiment of Yankees, which was largely composed of German immigrants, advanced through a field of clover in the Shenandoah Valley in search of the Rebel line to its front on June 8, 1862. Read more

Napoleon’s Dramatic Rescue

On March 18, 1799, a strange thing happened in the Near East backwater that today is Israel. In the years that followed the birth of Jesus, the rise of Christianity, and the fall of Byzantium, things in the region had quieted down considerably since the Mohammedan conquests (apart from the Crusades). Read more

The Secret World of Richard Nixon

In the spring of 1974—at the height of the political Watergate crisis in Washington, D.C.—Joseph Laitin, a spokesman at the Office of Management and Budget whose office was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, was on his way over to the west wing of the White House to meet with Treasury Secretary George Schultz. Read more

Tacfarinas’ Berber Revolt Against Rome

Tacfarinas, a former soldier of Rome’s Numidian cavalry, reined in his steed at the edge of the cliff with the ease of one born in the saddle. Read more

Terrible Toll at Tarawa

Seventeen months after the juggernaut of Japanese conquest in the Pacific had come to an abrupt end with the Battle of Midway, American strategists were ready to launch their long-awaited offensive in the Central Pacific. Read more

The Confederate Secret Service

The night of April 14, 1865, was one of celebration in Washington, D.C. Just a few days earlier, on April 9, Confederate General Robert E. Read more

Tank Clash in the Sinai

During the afternoon of October 9, 1973, Colonel Amnon Reshef, the commander of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) 14th Armored Brigade, conducted probes along the water’s edge of the Great Bitter Lake, a wide part of the Suez Canal. Read more