It’s an old photo, but with a squint this looks like a fishing village from the mid-20th century. And that’s exactly what Camp Hero was designed to fool the viewer into thinking it was. But in fact, this settlement of quaint-looking wooden clapboard buildings was a secret military base known as Montauk Air Force Station, […]
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This humble assemblage of metal has been the subject of fierce debate among historians — it is a 10th-century viking-age stirrup found in England. Horseback riding today would be unthinkable without this contraption, but it was not always that way. When the stirrup was introduced to Western Europe on a broad scale and what difference
The Introduction of the Stirrup to Western Europe Read More »
Tucked away in an incongruous green space close to a busy thoroughfare in Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania is Lincoln Cemetery, the final internment for tens upon tens of African Americans, buried here at a time when racial segregation was still legal in this country. Although the earliest tombstone dates to 1862, there is speculation that there were
Lincoln Cemetery in Mechanicsburg Read More »
The Robledo Mountains lie to the north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, and to the east of the Rio Grande continental rift. Much of the exposed rock is from about 280 million years ago (Paleozoic), and the geological footprint is obvious and amazing. You can see a slot canyon in most of these pictures, when
The Mexican flag flies over the city of Palomas, just over the border from the city of Columbus, New Mexico. Today Palomas is a town frequented by American tourists (like me) who cross over to shop and eat — the Pink House (second image) is its most famous establishment. (It even has its own Wikipedia
This is the stuffed body of the most famous messenger pigeon of the 20th century: Cher Ami. Now his little taxidermied self resides in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington DC, but in 1918, Cher Ami helped save the lives of 194 American Soldiers who had gotten separated from their larger group during the Meuse-Argonne offensive
Cher Ami the Most Famous Messenger Pigeon of the 20th Century Read More »
She looks wide-eyed in this picture to me, but Milunka Savic was the opposite of an ingenue. This 20th-century Serbian fought in the Balkan Wars and the First World War, and in World War II spent time in a Concentration Camp. She cleared these hurdles with chutzpah to spare and is the most decorated female
This is a photo from 1943 of a detention hospital for infected women in Leesville, Louisiana. And I’m about to deliver a really sad story about the U.S. government’s treatment of women during the 20th century. This is about a series of laws that came to be known as “The American Plan,” and they resulted
Chamberlain-Kahn Act of 1918 Read More »
General Flavius Aetius, considered by many to have been the last capable Roman leader in the Western Empire, defended Rome from the invasions of the Huns. He was assassinated by a weak Roman Emperor who allegedly boasted how well he had done by the act. Supposedly, one of the emperor’s courtiers responded: “whether you have
General Flavius Aetius Read More »
The Knights Templar built the magnificent Castle and Convent of Christ in Tomar, Portugal, in the 12th century. But when the military religious order was dissolved and its members routed and killed after 1319, the kings of Portugal made Tomar a refuge for the monastic knights, changing their name to the Order of Christ and
Tomar, the Castle and Convent Where the Knights Templar Survived Read More »
Lookit these super bitchin’ swords! This past week (Sept 6, 2023), archaeologists working in Israel announced their discovery of four Ancient Roman swords and the head of a javelin (called a pilum), found in amazingly preserved condition in a cave near the Dead Sea in Israel. Three of the swords were of a kind known
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This 3rd-century CE mosaic illustrates the month of April in the Ancient Roman world, which was then, as now, a time when sun and rains could be expected as part of the spring season. It was during this month that the religious feast devoted to the deity of mildew was celebrated. The Ancient Romans
Ancient Roman Holiday Dedicated to the God of Mildew Read More »
In the fight against the Nazis, the British and their allies faced some of their biggest challenges with German U-boats sinking crucial supply ships in the Atlantic: at one point, 800,000 tons of Allied equipment a month was being lost to the submarines. The Nazis had developed a multi-staged process of code encryption for their
These People Helped Alan Turing Break the Nazi’s Codes Read More »
This is a picture that ought to make us shudder even as we are grateful: it is a Mark39 thermonuclear bomb that came terrifyingly close to detonating on January 24, 1961, when a military aircraft broke up near Goldsboro North Carolina. It was holding a 24-megaton hydrogen bomb, which crashed into a swamp — three
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Step on up here for some old-time British propaganda, put out by the Far Eastern Bureau with the purpose of rallying support for the Allies against the Axis powers during the Second World War. The “strength in unity theme” was a common anthem by the Brits toward their colonial subjects — here, young, straight-backed men
British Propaganda in India during World War II Read More »
It was ’round about this time of the year — near the Fourth of July — nearly eight decades ago that a rancher from New Mexico called W.W. Brazel brought a bunch of mysterious-looking debris he had found on his property to the local sheriff, who was situated about 80 miles southeast in the small
The Roswell Incident Read More »
Tobyhanna State Park was formed out of state lands that had been on a large artillery range that preceded Tobyhanna Army Depot. It has 5,540 acres of land surrounding Lake Tobyhanna, which is named after an American Indian term meaning “a stream whose banks are fringed with alder.” Today I saw a lot of birch
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The Range Trail is a winding path that traverses across swampy and rocky forest in the Tobyhanna State Park, established in 1949. As you can see from the third slide, the area was used by the U.S. military as a live-artillery training ground during both World Wars. I didn’t see any shell remains on my
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One of the coolest Indigenous American weapons was the blowgun, which was developed well before the Columbian exchange. You can see painted on this ceramic from the modern Guatemalan Highlands from the Late Classic Maya period (CE 600-900) a row of hunters holding their blowguns as they return from a hunt (this image is a
The Invention of the (Poisoned) Blowgun by South American Peoples Read More »
She looks wide-eyed in this picture to me, but Milunka Savic was the opposite of an ingenue. This 20th-century Serbian fought in the Balkan Wars and the First World War, and in World War II spent time in a Concentration Camp. She cleared these hurdles with chutzpah to spare and is the most decorated female
Mikunka Savic, Serbian Warrior Read More »
