Category: Odd Facts
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…
Airships of the Civil War— The Bizarre Story of the Union Army’s Experimental Balloon Corps
“The balloons of the Civil War were a brief but truly forward-looking glimpse of what the future would bring.” By Charles M. Evans IT HAS OFTEN been said that the American Civil War was one…
Shadows of the Past – How a Network of Fugitive Nazis Found New Wars to Fight in the Middle East of the 1950s
“Outwardly, Brunner led a quiet life… In fact, he was a mercenary and arms dealer.” By Danny Orbach IN 1994, an official in the information security department of BND, Germany’s Secret Service, gave an order…
Funny Money — The Amazing History of Wartime Counterfeiting
“For more than 200 years, counterfeiting has been a part of the wartime strategies of a number of countries.” DURING THE 1990s, U.S. national security experts began tracking a new and rather unusual threat. Some individual…
