Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda is the most famous of the so-called Japanese holdouts, a collection of Imperial Army stragglers who continued to hide out in the South Pacific for several years after World War II had ended. An intelligence officer, Onoda had been…
What use is an inflatable dummy tank in a very real war? A lot, if the enemy believes that it’s real. During both World Wars, Allied forces made use of dummy versions of the British heavy tanks. These were constructed from a wooden framework and covered wi…
The internment of Japanese-Americans into camps during World War II was one of the most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history. According to the census of 1940, 127,000 persons of Japanese ancestry lived in the United States, the maj…
As casualties mounted during the Second World War, Germany was forced to call up ever-younger conscripts to fill the ranks of the Wehrmacht. So dire was the situation at the end of 1944, that boys born in 1928 were called up to serve the Fatherland. The…
Boris Yeltsin, who became president of Russia in 1991, was one of the most complex political leaders of his time. A longtime Communist Party leader, he was an important leader in the reform (social improvement) movements of the late 1980s and 1990s. Yel…
On 2 October 1940, Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government of Poland, signed the order to officially create a Jewish district (ghetto) in Warsaw. It was to become the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe. All…
The soldiers in the picture were executed after a military trial found them in violation of the Hague convention concerning land warfare, article 23: "It's especially forbidden [...], to make improper use of a flag of truce, of the national flag or of the …
The 872-day Siege of Leningrad, Russia, resulted from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad on the Eastern Front of World War II. The siege lasted from September 8, 1941, to January 27, 1944, and was one of the longest and most…
President Lyndon B. Johnson takes the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Jackie is angled in such a way as to hide the blood on her coat. It’s the perfect image t…
Recommended Historical Reading List. (Temporary list - More books will be added). General World War I World War II Eastern Front: General Accounts Red Army German Army Barbarossa For Stalingrad/Leningrad Kursk …
In 1889, Paris hosted an Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) to mark the 100-year anniversary of the French Revolution. More than 100 artists submitted competing plans for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars, located in central Paris, and serv…
Following the Soviet invasion of Poland at the onset of World War II in accordance with the Nazi-Soviet Pact against Poland, the Soviet Union acquired over half of the territory of the Second Polish Republic. Within months, in order to de-Polonize annex…
After the Japanese surrender in 1945, the Americans took on the task of occupying Japan and reforming the militaristic nation into a modern country that would never again threaten its neighbors. On 29 August 1945, MacArthur was ordered to exercise autho…
The originally seven-car imperial train was intended for the heir of the throne Nicholas Alexandrovich (the future Nicholas II). It was built in 1894-1896 in the Main Car Workshops of the Nicholas Railway Line. And although the train was designed to acc…
The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building. Chrysler had already begun work on…
The Statue of Liberty was completed in Paris in June 1884, presented to America by the people of France on July 4, 1884. The copper statue is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tab…
The name for the bikini design was coined in 1946 by French engineer Louis Réard, the designer of the bikini. He named the swimsuit after Bikini Atoll, where testing on the atomic bomb was taking place. Fashion designer Jacques Heim, also from France, r…
Rockefeller, then vice-president of the United States, was on a campaign swing through upstate New York on Sept. 16, 1976, with Sen. Bob Dole, who had been selected to be President Gerald Ford's running mate for the 1976 election. When someone in a grou…
The photograph was taken by Alice Seeley Harris, the man's name is Nsala. Here is part of her account (from the book “Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris”): He hadn't made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-appointed o…
The SS Morro Castle, named after a fortress that guards Havana Bay, was a luxury cruise ship of the 1930s that was built for the Ward Line for runs between New York City and Havana. On the morning of September 8, 1934, en route from Havana to New York, …