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Who was Simon Fraser? Winston Churchill, in a letter to Stalin, referred to Lord Lovat aka Simon Fraser as “the handsomest man who ever cut a throat.” The Fifteenth Lord Lovat, Simon Fraser, was a professional soldier with a long running Scottish ancestry some of whom had also made their presence known in history. Those […]
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The First Amendment. Book bans, disinformation, the wild world of the internet. Free speech debates are all around us. What were the Founding Fathers thinking when they created the First Amendment, and how have the words they wrote in the 18th century been stretched and shaped to fit a […]
Mary Charlton Jonas (1874-1950) returned to her work at the Egypt Exploration Society’s (EES) offices in the early days of 1930, refreshed and slightly tanned from her Christmas holidays in Egypt. Her desk was covered in paper: correspondence, paperwork, memos, pay packets, meeting requests, and all her other duties she had missed while she was […]
Strategic Importance and Objectives Lake Comacchio, a large lagoon in northern Italy, presented a formidable natural barrier. The area was heavily fortified by the Germans, who used the wetlands to their advantage, creating a series of defensive positions that were difficult to assault. The primary objective of Operation Roast was to outflank these defenses, secure […]
The Spanish Inquisition was not a medieval institution. Before 1300, Inquisitions were virtually nonexistent in Spain.[1]The Spanish kingdom of Castile never had an inquisition, and Aragón’s was effectively defunct by around 1450.[2] It might surprise many readers to discover that, while the last person executed by the Inquisition died in 1826 (by hanging, though the […]
Early Life and Career Halleck was born on a farm in Upstate New York and hated that life. He was raised by an uncle who set him up for a military career. He went to West Point where he excelled, graduating 3rd in his class. He was a favorite student of Dennis Hart Mahan. He […]
Early Life and Entry into the Royal Navy Born on the 14th of December, 1775, in Annsfield, Scotland, Thomas Cochrane was the son of Archibald Cochrane, the 9th Earl of Dundonald, a man of scientific curiosity and perpetual financial woes. This backdrop of intellectual vigor and economic struggle likely influenced Thomas’s character—imbuing him with a […]
Sudan has been at the center of a deadly and brutal war for over a year. It’s the site of the world’s largest hunger crisis, and the world’s largest displacement crisis. On the surface, it’s a story about two warring generals vying for power – the latest in a long cycle of power struggles that […]
On June 7, 1942, Japanese forces assaulted occupied the Alaskan territorial islands of Attu and Kiska, part of the Aleutian Islands chain. Its geographical placing puts it closer to Japan than to the Alaskan mainland or actual US mainland territory, but it was a violation of the US homeland none the less. It was the […]
The Sailors Life Rations The diet of almost all sailing vessels was the same. The men subsisted on salted pork, fish, or beef, ships biscuits, and a limited supply of vegetables such as peas. Additionally, sailors received unwanted calories from the weevils and other insects that burrowed their way into the ship’s biscuits while the […]