Reading time: 7 minutes
A browse through any military history book will no doubt bring up titles of famous officers, often bearing unusual, surprising, or sometimes downright hilarious nicknames. In many cases, itās clear where the sobriquet originated, while other examples hold a less-obvious significance.
Reading time: 5 minutes
Five hundred years ago, on March 31 1520, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan began a sojourn in a part of South America that has been known as Patagonia ever since. MagellanāsĀ five-month long overwinterĀ in a natural harbour that has become known asĀ Puerto San JuliĆ”nĀ was part ofĀ the first circumnavigation of the globe.
Reading time: 10 minutes
On May 8, 1945, a battered, broken Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied armies which had crashed across its borders, fighting town by town to topple Hitlerās regime. Two days later, one of Germanyās strangest supporters surrendered, too.
Reading time: 6 minutes
At the age of 43 Cromwell had strapped on his sword for the first time ā as a captain of a troop of horses in parliamentās army at the beginning of the English Civil War.
Reading time: 8 minutes
Early in the Second World War, when Britainās empire stood alone, one man was responsible for the early successes which broke the myth of Axis invincibility. His name was Richard OāConnor.
Reading time: 4 minutes
On June 3 1992, the High Court of Australia handed down its decision in theĀ long-running case of Eddie Koiki MaboĀ and his compatriots from the Torres Strait island of Mer. Together they challenged the authority of the Queensland government to claim not just sovereignty but also ownership of the land comprising their ancestral home.
Reading time: 5 minutes
The size of the first population of people needed to arrive, survive, and thrive in what is now Australia is revealed inĀ twoĀ studiesĀ published today. It took more than 1,000 people to form a viable population. But this was no accidental migration, as our work shows the first arrivals must have been planned.
Reading time: 6 minutes
In 1914, Britain stood at the forefront of organising one of the first civilian mass internment operations of the 20th century. 30,000 civilian German, Austrian and Turkish men who had been living or travelling in Britain in the summer of that year found themselves behind barbed wire, in many cases for the whole duration of World War I.
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Reading time: 5 minutes
Escape was a romantic ideal rather than a rational expectation. Gunter Pluschow, who escaped from another PoW camp at Donington Hall, in Leicestershire, wasĀ the only GermanĀ to make it home in World War I, largely because he managed to adopt a disguise and stow away on board a cargo ship at Harwich.
Reading time: 4 minutes
Diwali is a festival of lights and celebrates the triumph of light over darkness ā but where does this stem from? Suzanne Newcombe looks at the religious festivalās origins in this article.
Reading time: 5 minutes
TheĀ Battle of GettysburgĀ was a turning point in the American Civil War, and Gen. George Pickettās infantry charge on July 3, 1863, was the battleās climax. Had the Confederate Army won, it could have continued its invasion of Union territory. Instead, the charge was repelled with heavy losses. This forced the Confederates to retreat south and end their summer campaign.
Reading time: 5 minutes
If youāre about to fight a battle, would you rather have a larger fleet, or a smaller but more advanced one? One hundred years ago, on May 31 1916, the British Royal Navy was about to find out if its choice of a larger fleet was the correct one. At the Battle of Jutland ā as the major naval battle of World War I is known in English ā these choices were unusually influenced by mathematics.
Reading time: 5 minutes
536 is theĀ current consensus candidateĀ for worst year in human history. A volcanic eruption, or possibly more than one, somewhere in the northern hemisphere would seem to have been the trigger. Wherever it was, the eruption precipitated a decade-long āvolcanic winterā, in which China suffered summer snows and average temperatures in Europe dropped by 2.5ā. Crops failed. People starved. Then they took up arms against each other.
Reading time: 5 minutes
More a mutiny than a battle, it led to the death of Private William Crossland in nearby Mounsey Road, and four other injuries to black American soldiers in a five-hour confrontation which spread from the thatched Olde Hob Inn at one end of the town to the Adams Hall army camp, where from early 1943 the US Eighth Army Quartermaster Truck Company, a black company apart from a few white officers, had been based. The event was officially downplayed, in order not to undermine morale on the home front, but the events of that night led to the conviction of 27 black American soldiers.
Reading time: 9 minutes
On the night of 4 November 1605, a man calling himself John Johnson was found in the vaults beneath the House of Lords with 36 barrels of gunpowder. Under questioning, Johnson ā whose real name was Guy Fawkes ā admitted that he and his co-conspirators planned to use the gunpowder to blow up the House during the State Opening of Parliament on 5 November. If successful, this plot ā which became known as the Gunpowder Treason, or Gunpowder Plot ā would have killed not only King James I (and VI) but members of his family, his chief ministers, and the Members of Parliament in attendance at the state opening. This was treason on an unprecedented scale ā an attempt to destroy both the king and his government.
Reading time: 7 minutes
Until the 21st century, the contributions of African-American soldiers in World War II barely registered in Americaās collective memory of that war. The ātan soldiers,ā as the Black press affectionately called them, were also for the most part left out of the triumphant narrative of Americaās āGreatest Generation.ā In order to tell their story of helping defeat Nazi Germany in my 2010 book, āBreath of Freedom,ā I had to conduct research in more than 40 different archives in the U.S. and Germany.
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Sino-Vietnamese war was a short, nasty conflict fought between China and Vietnam in early 1979. Largely forgotten by almost everybody including the belligerents, it was a side plot of the Sino-Soviet split, itself a sideshow to the Cold War. Letās go over the events before, during and after the war to see what it was all about.
Reading time: 5 minutes
The battle for France in 1940 is often portrayed as a rout: the German Wehrmacht simply trounced the French forces within a few weeks, crushing them with military might and tactical ingenuity. However, a few episodes debunk this image and the Battle of Stonne, where a small town in the Ardennes changed hands 17 times in three days, is one of the most prominent.
Reading time: 8 minutes
Hamilton is a smash hit depicting the lives of America’s founding fathers. But, when it comes to Lafayette, it got a few things wrong.
Reading time: 7 minutes
The history of our world is filled with forgotten, yet important tales. Dive into some of the most interesting forgotten histories.