Europe
It was the middle of June 1191, and the Third Crusade was bogged down before the walls of Acre, the largest city and chief port of the former Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. Read more
Europe
By summer’s end 1944 Adolf Hitler, along with much of his staff, began to realize that Germany was in serious danger of losing the war. Read more
Europe
Sixty-four-year-old Robert Stubbs slowly walked across the playing field of the Staveley Road School in the West London suburb of Chiswick. Read more
Europe
Richard Gatling was born in Hertford County, NC, on December 12, 1818. His father was a prosperous farmer and inventor, and the son was destined to inherit the “invention bug.” Read more
Europe
Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more
Europe
I was always fascinated by the mastery of water,” Sir Donald Coleman Bailey reflected, long after the end of World War II. Read more
Europe
It was an impressive sight. Upon the reviewing stand as honored guest was General Dwight D. Read more
Europe
The three rubber dinghies struggled through the rough surf in the pitch black night toward an inhospitable stretch of rocky beach. Read more
Europe
By 1944, many top generals in Adolf Hitler’s army understood the war was lost and that they had better make arrangements to ensure their safety. Read more
Europe
Spanish Legionaries charged into battle crying, “Long Live Death.” They sang of being “the Bridegrooms of Death” and proved they meant it with over 10,000 killed and 35,000 wounded. Read more
Europe
By the summer of 55 bc, 45-year-old Roman proconsul Gaius Julius Caesar was a veteran military campaigner. For the past three years, under his lead, the tramp of hobnailed sandals had resounded across the countryside of Gaul, the westernmost province of the Roman empire. Read more
Europe
England’s survival hung in the balance. She had only recently clashed with an imposing Continental alliance, in a futile war characterized by unprecedented slaughter on obscure fields in Flanders. Read more
Europe
On a hot, dusty September morning in 1631, the Imperial Army of the Holy Roman Emperor rested easily on the plains outside the village of Breitenfield, six miles north of Leipzig, Saxony. Read more
Europe
One of the most precious resources in war, and the one most often in short supply, is sleep. Read more
Europe
Mention Elizabethan England to most people, and they usually think of William Shakespeare, the Globe Theatre and Sir Francis Drake. Read more
Europe
For many history buffs, the date 1066 conjures up an image of Norman knights breaking through the shield wall of the ax-wielding Anglo-Saxons at Senlac Hill. Read more
Europe
When the first tanks appeared in World War I, they were relatively lightly armored and protected the crews only against small-arms fire. Read more
Europe
The fundamental pillars of war—strategy and tactics— inevitably depend on an imponderable and uncontrollable factor: the weather. With the increasing sophistication of weather data gathering, analysis, and forecasting in the early 20th century, predicting the weather became an integral part of World War II. Read more
Europe
The time was early 1967, the place a crowded square over a body of water on a narrow bridge in downtown Saigon. Read more
Europe
The U.S. Army trained dogs for a number of tasks during World War II. From checking for mines to guarding prisoners of war, the dogs performed admirably, but a few special dogs actually earned jump wings. Read more
