War Horses — Cavalry’s Surprising Contribution to WW2
“While mechanized warfare did signal the end of the cavalry’s role on the battlefield, armies on both sides still used mounted troops throughout the Second World War.” IT’S ONE OF the more famous moments of…
HMS St. Lawrence – The Mightiest Ship To Never Sail the Seas
“The lumbering warship’s sole purpose was to assert the Crown’s naval supremacy on a 300 kilometre long strip of freshwater.” THE COLOSSAL St. Lawrence was one of the largest fighting vessels of the Napoleonic era. Laid down in April…
Galvanized Yankees – Meet the Confederate POWs who joined the Union Army
“This was no ordinary U.S. Army outfit. Raised the previous winter in Rock Island, Illinois, the 3rd USVI was made up entirely of veterans of the Confederate States Army.” IT WAS JULY 26, 1865 when a force…
Touché – Some of the Snappiest Comebacks in Military History
CAUGHT BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE. That would be an apt description of the Zaporozhian Cossacks of southern Ukraine. Originally a band of serfs who rebelled against Polish and Lithuanian domination in the 15th…
Riot Acts – The Surprising History of Wartime Civil Unrest
“A number of cities were rocked by widespread violence and civic unrest during the war years. Here are some examples.” AMERICA LIKES TO REMEMBER the Second World War as an era in which the Greatest Generation…
The Man Who Would Be King – How a Former Royal Navy Sailor Named Himself Ruler of Iceland
Jorgen Jorgenson had a most peculiar résumé. Born in 1780, the Denmark native could claim such varied careers as sailor, privateer, writer, revolutionary, explorer, gambler, policeman, felon and even spy. But Jorgenson fancied a more…
