Category: Research & Histories (Page 1 of 68)

Brady Hill is a history teacher at the high school in Frontenac, a small city just north of Pittsburg in the old Kansas coal country. You can read about this by clicking here.

Previously we have reported about these sites in the northwestern part of the District of Columbia (read by clicking here). The Army Corps of Engineers says that the cleanup and remediation work is now complete. Click here for the complete story.

William and Elizabeth Smith Friedman were among the premier cryptoanalysts in the First World War. You can read more about them by clicking here.

Much of the barbed wire used by both sides on the Western Front was manufactured in Allentown, PA. Read the whole story by clicking here.

This isn’t about the $277 billion media and entertainment company that Walt Disney (1901-1966) started in 1923. This is about Walt himself, who altered a document to serve as a Red Cross civilian volunteer, arriving at the Front shortly after the Armistice. You can read Walt’s story by clicking here, which is a link to an official Disney website. ...read more

A few months after the Antwerp fiasco (click here) Churchill enthusiastically contributed the Royal Naval Division (RND) to his next brainchild, the Dardenelles campaign. They were landed on April 25^th, 1915 at lightly defended ‘X’ Beach, but didn’t advance from the beachhead and were soon withdrawn by sea as the 29^th Division needed reinforcement at Helles. The RND remained in that sector throughout and participated in all of the Krythia battles. In the first battle (April 28th) The Royal Marine Brigade assaulted but failed to capture the strongpoint later called Gurkha Bluff because the 1/6^th Gurkhas eventually took it.   In the second battle (May 6^th-8^th) the RND served with two brigades of ANZACs in an ad hoc division-sized force. The Hood battalion succeeded in capturing a position called Kanli Dere but this only moved the line about 400 yards and the bulk of this attack was borne by the ANZACs, particularly the Kiwis. As a result of this brief association the ANZACS regarded the RND as poor fighters. ...read more

Phoebe Ann Mosey (1860 – 1926), popularly known as ‘Annie Oakley’, was a sharpshooter who starred for 17 years in Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show.  It is said that, while performing in Berlin in 1887, she shot off the tip of a cigarette clenched between the teeth of the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. You can read more about Annie by clicking here. ...read more

The brainchild of Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, the Royal Naval Division (RND) was formed in 1914. It was comprised of eight battalions of reserve sailors not needed for sea service and four battalions of Royal Marines, scrounged up from each Marine depot. The RND eventually numbered about 8,000 men, which was under-manned compared to army divisions of the time, which at full strength had around 12,000. The ‘sailor’ battalions were named after famous admirals: Anson, Benbow, Collingwood, Drake, Hawke, Hood, Howe and Nelson. The Marine battalions were titled after their respective depots: Chatham, Deal, Plymouth and Portsmouth. ...read more

Due to a shortage of steel during the war, the United States Shipping Board (USSB) contracted for about 700 steam-powered cargo ships to have hulls made from wood. Shipyards on the Sabine River in Texas took on some of these contracts. So the big news in Orange, Texas in May, 1918 was the launching of the City of Bonham, which was the first of 12 very large wooden cargo ships ordered by the USSB. The Bonham was built according to A.M. Daughtery’s plans and was exactly like his ships War Marvel and War Mystery, both of which had been built in Orange for the British Cunard Line. With a displacement of 4,700 tons, they were the largest wooden cargo ships that would ever be built, although by war’s end wooden ships as big as 7,300 tons had been ordered. ...read more