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A crowned Duke William II of Normandy discovers the Saxon King Harold lying dead on the battlefield in this Victorian painting of the Battle of Hastings by Frank Wilkin. The actual encounter was some six miles from Hastings, at Senlac Hill, near the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex.

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William, Duke of Normandy

By Mark Carlson

The final defeat of the Saxon King Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, meant that England became forever Norman. Read more

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Bovington Tank Museum

By Ray Stevenson

If armored vehicles are your interest, the Tank Museum at Bovington Camp, Dorset, is your holy grail. This cavernous museum, measuring 50,000 square feet, holds the world’s finest and most comprehensive collection of over 250 armored vehicles from 26 countries. Read more

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Rethinking D-Day

By Blaine Taylor

One query that was raised on the Allied side in 1942—two years before Operation Overlord—was if the cross-English Channel invasion of Northwest Europe via France was necessary at all in order to defeat the Third Reich. Read more

A 19th-century print of the Battle of Fort Pillow conveys the Union sentiment that the Confederate capture of the small redoubt was a massacre. The affair remains one of the most contentious incidents in America’s history.

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A Deplorable Affair

By John Walker

As dawn broke on April 12, 1864, the Union garrison manning Fort Pillow, a small redoubt on a cliff overlooking the Mississippi River in West Tennessee, found itself surrounded by 1,500 Confederate cavalrymen led by Maj. Read more

A Fu-Go bomb snagged on a tree in Kansas, February 23, 1945. Approximately 9,000 balloons were launched, but only about 900 made it across the Pacific; several landed in the Midwest.

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The Deadly Balloon Bombs of Imperial Japan

By 1944, the Japanese still had no long-range bombers to match the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. And a great many of Dai Nippon’s warplanes and aircraft carriers were lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Read more

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Rosebud Creek

By Eric Niderost

Around 8 o’clock on the morning of June 17, 1876, Brig. Gen. George Crook ordered his troops to halt along the banks of Rosebud Creek. Read more

Residents of an English town gather around an Army band to listen to their favorite songs in Band Concert by Olin Dows. Many of the songs that were written and performed during World War II are standards today.

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World War II Music

By Sheldon Winkler

Some of the most memorable and enduring popular music of the 20th century was written during World War II. Read more

Napoleon Bonaparte with Polish Prince Joseph Poniatowski at the Battle of Leipzig. Poniatowski was killed later that day.

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Polish Prince Joseph Poniatowski

By Jeremy Green

­Polish Prince Joseph Poniatowski, a great hero of Napoleonic legend, ultimately was a man without a country. Born on May 7, 1762, the prince at first enjoyed the luxurious life of a nobleman because of his ties to the ruling family of Poland. Read more

Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, founder of the Lebensborn Program, talks with a young Ukrainian boy. Many children were essentially kidnapped from occupied countries and given to German parents.

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Children for Hitler

By Brent Douglas Dyck

By 1936, 18-year-old Hildegard Koch had reached a crossroads in her young life as she finished her schooling. Read more

Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors defeated a mighty Aztec army at Otumba in July 1520. The victory occurred one week after the Night of Sorrows, when the Spanish suffered heavy casualties while fleeing the Aztec capital.

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Cortés Exacts His Revenge

By John Walker

As the year 1520 drew to a close, the half-starved inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, the magnificent capital city of the most powerful city-state in the Aztec Empire, found that they were threatened by a massive host of enemies, both foreign and indigenous, which was led by Spanish Captain-General Hernán Cortés and his small band of conquistadors. Read more

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Lightnings on the Deck

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Second Lieutenant William Capron first saw the attacking Messerschmitts as black dots descending rapidly to ambush his squadron of American fighter-bombers. Read more

The A-10 Thunderbolt II’s seven-barrel, 30mm autocannon fires a round made of depleted uranium encased in an aluminum shell with a muzzle velocity of 3,500 feet per second.

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Weapons: The A-10 Warthog Attack Aircraft

By Christopher Miskimon

Smoke and haze clouded the skies over Kuwait on February 25, 1991. It was the second day of Operation Desert Storm, the ground operation to eject the Iraqi military from its smaller neighbor. Read more

Pompey led troops to victory in a series of battles and actions that neutralized threats to Rome’s interests in Asia Minor.

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Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

Gnaeus Pompey was one of the pivotal Roman leaders during the last decades of the Republic. He was born into an old and wealthy provincial family from Picenum on September 29, 106 BC. Read more

U.S. Navy Lieutenant Alex Vraciu holds up six fingers signifying the number of Japanese aircraft that fell to his guns during an eight-minute span on a single mission.

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The Setting Sun

By David H. Lippmann

Once again, the Japanese regarded an upcoming naval engagement as the “decisive battle,” but it had been two years since her aircraft carriers and battleships had emerged from their Inland Sea lairs to menace the United States Navy. Read more