When a Toilet Break Led to War Between China and Japan in 1937
Wars have been waged over the stupidest things, but in 1937, Japan took it a step further. That was the year that a minor incident…
Badly Wounded, This Marine Used His Spade To Knock Grenades Back At The Enemy
Hector Cafferatta would describe himself as the world’s worst baseball player, but that didn’t stop him from whacking over a dozen grenades out of the…
Wilhelm Frankl and Fritz Beckhardt: Top German Jewish Fighter Aces of WW1
Wilhelm Frankl Standoff Neuberg, home to the 74th Tactical Fighter Squadron, sits just south of the Danube River, nestled deep within a woodland. Since 1973, the base…
Massacre: The Day The SS Wiped Out The Entire French Village Of Oradour-sur-Glane
On December 9, 2014, a German court in Cologne dropped the multiple charges of murder and accessory to murder against an 88-year-old man named Werner…
From the Vikings to Vietnam – Five Wars in Which Drugs Fuelled the Fighting
Drugs have a long history as part of war. These days, their main role is a medicinal one, but down the centuries they have often…
Jane Fawcett, The Young British Code Breaker Who Helped Sink the Bismarck
Jane Fawcett was a young London society woman when she began working at Bletchley Park, the headquarters of Britain’s code-breaking efforts in World War II.…
Medal of Honor – John R. Fox Sacrificed Himself by Deliberately Calling an Artillery Strike on his Own Position
John Robert Fox was an American soldier who was killed in action when he deliberately called artillery fire on his own position after his position…
The French “Red Zone” Is So Dangerous, It Still Is A No-Go Area 100 Years After WWI
The Zone Rouge (Red Zone) is a region near Verdun, France spanning some 460 square miles of mostly virgin forest – at least on the…
The Battle of Ortona – When 2,600 Canadian Men Were Sacrificed for a General’s Pride
In December 1943, a group of largely untested Canadians went up against German forces in the Italian town of Ortona. The result was a bloodbath…
The Surrender of Japan Aboard the USS Missouri
Imperial Japan announced its surrender on August 15, 1945. The surrender was formally signed a few weeks later, on September 2, 1945, halting the hostilities…
Five Women Who Played Vital Roles in the American Civil War
While in most modern cultures women have only been permitted to officially participate in warfare for a few decades at most, that has never prevented…
Civil War Spies: The Secret, Underground Peace Societies Of The American Civil War
Though we may think of the South as a unified place in which the Confederacy was born and fought for, it was a place divided…