If the Spanish American War was a bar fight…

I came across a humorous take on World War I the other day. “If World War I Was a Bar Fight” was first published last year, and has some debatable facts and unfortunate omissions, but it is a lot of fun. (Find it here) So I naturally thought: “What other wars would work with this…

This Day in History: Vanguard 1

Are you worried about Russia? They may do something first, but we do it best. On March 17, 1958, the United States successfully put its second satellite into orbit: Vanguard 1.  It is still there. Sputnik’s effect In 1955, the U.S. announced intentions to launch a satellite, but the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 in…

Book: The Monuments Men

How to thwart a pillager With his book, The Monuments Men, Robert Edsel has brought a little-known piece of the Allied effort in World War II to the front of our consciousness. The MFAA, or “Monuments Men” were a tiny group of American, British, and French soldiers who scoured Europe for the thousands of pieces…

Don’t forget China’s role in the Vietnam War

It was China’s neighborhood When Americans think about the Vietnam War, China is usually not the first topic that comes to mind. China had great interest in the war though, and exerted quite a bit of influence in the region. This is an important interaction to remember when you read about present-day Chinese actions in…

The fallacy of American “Lessons Learned”

“Lessons learned” is an overused and useless phrase. It is batted around in educated American military circles and indicates an assumption that we made a mistake once and won’t make the same mistake again. Foreign Policy published an article last month titled “The Top 10 Mistakes Made in the Afghan War.” The line that really…

Museum: War birds brought to life

In Addison, Texas, north of Dallas, you can find a gem of a museum. The Cavanaugh Flight Museum specializes in air-worthy historical planes, and is the home of the Commemorative Air Force’s heavy bombers. I last visited the Cavanaugh in December, 2013. Quality of research The Cavanaugh museum has well-researched narrative, especially from a technical…

Letters from the past

What if we could hear, first-hand, what it was like to be on a ship in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese raid on December 7th, 1941? What if one of your family-members had an eye-witness story about the November, 2004 Battle of Fallujah in their email? Are you a U.S. veteran with a stack of…

Get lost in digitized maps

Do you enjoy staring at old maps? The University of Richmond has produced a digital and interactive version of Charles Paullin and John K. Wright’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, originally published in 1932. You can find it here: http://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/ This is a broad collection of maps – it includes information…