Category: Odd Facts
The Coal Black Sea – How a Shocking 1914 Naval Disaster Nearly Sank Winston Churchill
“The classified findings concluded that a submarine attack was inevitable, so Churchill hushed them up.” By Stuart Heaver JUST SIX WEEKS into the First World War, three British armoured cruisers, HMS Hogue, Aboukir and Cressy,…
The Defence of Van – Inside the Stubborn Armenian Resistance That Presaged One of the First World War’s Bloodiest Chapters
“In a foreshadowing of the great urban battles of the Second World War, the Ottomans found fighting street-to-street, house-to-house, and often hand-to-hand in a dense urban environment frustratingly difficult.” By Alexander Zakrzewski Over a hundred…
Operation Foxley – Inside the Abortive Allied Plot to Assassinate the Führer
“The best plan SOE could come up with involved using a sniper to shoot Hitler on his regular morning stroll.” By Eric Lee IT HAS NOW been nearly a quarter century since the British government…
The Dartmoor Massacre — Why an 1815 Slaughter of American POWs in a British Prison Was All But Forgotten
“The prisoners were convinced that the events of April 6, would live forever in infamy. One told his diary that night that their ordeal would be remembered with the same reverence and fury as the…
Armistice 1917 – The Failed Peace Proposals That Might Have Ended WW1 Sooner & Changed the 20th Century
“A truce could have lead to preliminary negotiations followed in turn by a peace conference. Once talks began in earnest, it is doubtful whether a hemorrhaging Europe would ever again want to take up arms.”…
“Dear John…” — The Untold History of the Dreaded Wartime Break-Up Letter
“Given the Dear John’s prominence as both a lived experience and cultural motif, you’d think that someone would have written a book about this most notorious of wartime epistles.” By Susan L. Carruthers EVER SINCE…
