History
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The Novel ‘Knork’ Helped Civil War Amputees Eat
By the end of the Civil War, it is estimated that surgeons on both sides had conducted roughly 60,000 amputations. With the increased number of disabled veterans, the prosthetic industry saw great advances. Many of these veterans, however, decided not to wear artificial limbs for various reasons, including not wishing to take “charity” from the government (which gave a stipend…
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Civil War Generals Never Forgot the Blood and Lost Friends in the US Showdown with Mexico
In September 1861, while stationed in Paducah, Ky., Private John H. Page of the 1st Illinois Light Artillery received notice that he had been promoted to second lieutenant in the 3rd U.S. Infantry and was to report for duty in Washington, D.C. After packing his belongings, Page caught a boat for Cairo, Ill., where he reported to the general in…
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Dan Sickles Insisted that His Gettysburg Antics Saved the Union. Was He Right?
“It was either a good line, or a bad one, and, whichever it was, I took it on my own responsibility….I took up that line because it enabled me to hold commanding ground, which, if the enemy had been allowed to take—as they would have taken it if I had not occupied it in force—would have rendered our position on…
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The Best Books & Films About Earp-era Tombstone
Books Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal (1931, by Stuart N. Lake) Though ex-publicity agent Stuart Lake interviewed ex-lawman Wyatt Earp on several occasions, this ostensible biography is laced with fabrications. One shouldn’t blame Earp. Lake was out to create a folk hero and sell books, and in that he succeeded admirably. Frontier Marshal served as the origin story for several Hollywood…
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From Korea to Vietnam, This West Pointer Was An Inspiration To All Who Knew Him
On March 30, 1972, the aging revolutionaries in Hanoi’s Politburo abandoned the strategy of protracted struggle and launched an all-out conventional invasion of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN). By mid-April, the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) had committed its entire combat capability—14 divisions, 26 separate infantry regiments, and 1,200 tanks, plus all its artillery regiments and engineer battalions. The NVA also…
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Special Guest Star: The B-17
The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress has found itself back in the spotlight after the January 26 debut of the AppleTV+ miniseries Masters of the Air. Produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman—who were also behind the series Band of Brothers and The Pacific—and based on the book by Donald L. Miller, the nine-part series tells the story of…
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A Union Rebel Inside Robert E. Lee’s Family
“[Robert E. Lee Jr.] is off with Jackson & I hope will catch Pope & his cousin Louis Marshall,” General Robert E. Lee wrote to his daughter Mildred on July 28, 1862, not long after Maj. Gen. John Pope had been given command of the Union Army of Virginia. Marshall was his nephew, the son of Lee’s older sister, Anne.…
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