A Real Life Weapon Of Legend: Greek Fire
Greek fire was a real weapon which has achieved near-legendary status. An incendiary device deployed against advancing Arabs by the defenders of Constantinople; it became…
The Submachine Gun – An Infantry Weapon Which Changed The Face Of Warfare
From the First World War to the Second World War, the submachine gun played an important part in infantry fighting. A small machine gun firing…
Why the World’s Greatest Naval Power Opposed the Use of Steam Ships
From the start of the 19th century, the race was on to create steam-powered navies. This would eventually take the world’s fleets from wooden sailing…
How The Spanish Armada Failed To Conquer Against The English
The defeat of a Spanish invasion force in 1588 was a moment of great patriotic pride for Elizabethan England. The nation’s sailors had driven off…
Building Armies in the Harsh World of Medieval England
Recruiting an army could be a difficult business in the Middle Ages. Most people’s lives consisted of farming small patches of land. When people didn’t…
Life at Thélepte, a US Air Base in WWII North Africa in World War Two
Over the winter of 1942-3, American pilots spent several months based at the airfield at Thélepte in North Africa. It was a difficult posting, one…
The Amazing Story of the Merrills – Reunited Years After Each Thought the Other Dead
War often tears families apart, leaving them mourning those lost to violence or the deprivation that follows. But sometimes their stories have a happy ending.…
11 Battles of the Creek Indian War in Early 19th-Century America
Battles do not have to be vast to be significant. The Creek Indian War, which took place from 1813 to 1814, was a hard fought…
“The Great Army” – The Vikings at Their Peak
The most powerful and devastating series of Vikings raids to hit Western Europe came between 865 and 896 AD. During these decades, a massive combined…
Horrifying, Tragic, Inspirational – How the Nazis Destroyed Lidice and the World Preserved its Memory
In June 1942, the Nazi German occupiers of Czechoslovakia destroyed the mining village of Lidice. It was wiped off the map so completely that even…
The Assassination of The Butcher of Prague – Reinhard Heydrich
One of the most important covert operations of the Second World War, Operation Anthropoid was the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi commander who led…
Raiders and Traders: How The Vikings Conquer England
The end of the first millennium AD saw a turning point for England. After decades of security, the independent kingdom once again came under attack…