The Ilyushin Il-2 Shturmovik became the aerial representative of the Soviet response to the German invasion on the Eastern Front during the Second World War. The Il-2 was designed as a low-level close-support aircraft capable of defeating enemy armo…
A group of determined young human torpedoes and assault swimmers fought bravely for Italy in the Second World War, inspiring fear and respect from the British Navy. The actions of these few men severely reduced British naval power in the Mediterrane…
Berthed today at NAUTICUS, the National Maritime Center, the USS Wisconsin (BB-64) was the last authorized of the four Iowa-class battleships, the largest American dreadnoughts ever built. Wisconsin saw action in World War II and the Korean Conflict…
Howard Hughes was an industrialist, aviator, and eccentric, but he was also the most important movie producer during the golden age of Hollywood. At a time when filmmaking was tightly controlled and highly formulaic, Hughes used his enormous wealth…
The fighting on July 1, 1863 built the foundation to what would become known as the bloodiest battle fought on American soil. Yet, it remains one of the most overlooked locations ofthe battlefield. Cast into the shadows of much more scenic locations…
From 1967-1971, Stuart Steinberg served in the U.S. Army as an explosive ordnance disposal specialist. In January 1968, he was sent to Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where chemical and biological weaponry was stockpiled, staying there until July 19…
Northern California has a fascinating criminal history. Some of America's most infamous criminals and outlaws lived and died in the area, including John Paul Chase, partner of Public Enemy Number One, Lester Baby Face Nelson Gillis. Others have come…
Over the past thirty-five years, a small team of explorers have surveyed the southern basin of Lake Michigan in search of World War II US Navy aircraft. The aircraft were lost during mishaps that occurred during an almost forgotten naval project whi…
In its first century and counting, NASA Langley Research Center [LaRC] has had a remarkable history that has stood out not only for the many outstanding achievements in flight and space exploration but the people who made it happen. "If there were a…
Murder and mystery, society, sex and suspense were combined in this case in such a manner as to intrigue and captivate the public fancy to a degree perhaps unparalleled in recent annals. Ohio vs. Sheppard, 165 Ohio St. 293, 294 (1956). While this sh…
On August 7, 2011, former Pennsylvania Railroad type E8A diesel units No. 5711 and No. 5809 are passing through the borough of Greenville in Mercer County, Pennsylvania on the former Erie Railroad now Norfolk Southern Railway on a rail excursion in…
Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and endured both the Nazi occupation and the brutal Russian liberation. He joined the Czech Air force, rising to Captain by the age of 21. When he could no longer tolerate life under the Communists, he hijacked…
Weak maritime nations have always sought to augment the strength of their coastal defenses and navies by the use of "diabolical" contrivances for destroying an invader's ships. The history of the adoption of the torpedo as a recognized implement of…
The first street railway opened in New Orleans in 1835. Over the years various methods of powering the streetcars including horses, stream locomotives, overhead cable system, and fireless locomotives were tried. In 1893, electric streetcar operation…
This is the story of Captain Marendaz, a pilot in the RFC in the Great War and his life as a manufacturer of cars in the 1920s and 1930s when he competed extensively at Brooklands and elsewhere, before moving on to designing and building aircraft. H…
Completed in 1911, the Copper River Northwestern Railway allowed Alaska's mining industry to flourish. Copper and gold prospecting townships and camps spread rapidly in the following thirty years. Far-flung glacier-side bunkhouses and angling statio…
"No chapter in the annals of the most important battle of America's national epic has been more celebrated than the key struggle for possession of the rocky hill at the extreme southern flank of the battle line at Gettysburg, Little Round Top. And n…
'The evening is closing in; the sun has set, leaving a hot, red glow, where his copper disk has just sunk beyond the Pacific horizon; and the eye wanders out from the infant waves, at foot just tinged with red, and reflecting the light as they move…
Chicago's South Shore Line is a photographic essay of the last interurban electric railroad operating in the United States. Completed as the Chicago, Lake Shore & South Bend Railway (CLS&SBR) connecting South Bend, Indiana, with Pullman, Illinois, i…
Before retiring in 2013, Neolia Cole, the eighty-six year old daughter of potter Arthur Ray Cole, was first to arrive and last to leave the Cole's Pottery shop. She possesses the indomitable spirit that has kept a Cole in pottery-making for more tha…
Accounts of brutality fill the history of warfare. The behavior of any human being is, of course, a very complex phenomenon, whether in war or in peace. Historians in large part have described in detail the actions of military groups that have commi…
North Carolina's eighteenth and nineteenth-century Moravian potters were remarkable artisans whose products included coarse earthenware, slip-trailed decorated ware, Leeds-type fine pottery, press-molded stove tiles, figural bottles, toys, and salt-…
Abandoned structures are places that open the imagination and invite interpretation. Distressed wood and weathered remnants of human life are crossed by time and animal tracks, inviting one to picture what once was. Abandoned homes and buildings off…
Ravenna has eight World Heritages sites--churches, baptisteries, chapels and monuments dating from the fifth and sixth centuries AD which are renowned especially for exquisite mosaics portraying biblical scenes and figures. They were designed, const…
Detroit's Streetcar Heritage is a photographic essay of the Detroit, Michigan, streetcar system. Replacement of slow moving horsecar service began with the opening of an electric street railway by the Detroit Citizens Street Railway in 1892. By 1900…
Street Cars of Washington D.C. is a photographic essay of the history of the well-kept modern street car system that provided frequent transit service to much of our nation's capital up to its closure in January, 1962. Washington D.C. was the first…
The Texans from Hood's Texas Brigade and other regiments who fought at Gettysburg on 1-3 July 1863 described their experiences of the battle in personal diaries, interviews, newspaper articles, letters and speeches. Their reminiscences provide a fas…
In March 1935, Goering unveiled to the world his formerly "black,' secret German Air Force, the later dreaded Luftwaffe. That April, he married his second wife, a popular German stage actress, and in May solidified Germany's pre-1939 surprisingly go…
JFK had won the Presidency in 1960 by a razor thin majority, and his re-election campaign for 1964 was expected to be as close. He began it in November 1963 with a kick-off multi-city, four-day swing across the important state of Texas. It was going…
This book contains almost 200 photos taken from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s by the General Electric Company. Over these decades GE scientists continually experimented to invent and modify street lights that could transform urban downtow…
`Chateau Higginson' is a vivid and absorbing account of one man's efforts to construct a building that would create "a new way for Bostonians-and Americans-to live." Not only does Henry Lee Higginson (best known for founding the Boston Symphony Orch…
Thomas J. Lipton's America's Cup Campaigns is the saga on one man's three decade obsession with winning the America's Cup. This is author Richard V. Simpson's fifth title concerning the quest for the America's Cup-the Blue Riband prize for the sport…
San Francisco's first cable car line opened in 1873. The successful development of the electric streetcar by Frank Sprague in 1888 plus the 1906 San Francisco earthquake resulted in the decline of the cable car system. Concerned that the cable car s…
During the crucial three days of combat at Gettysburg, the most nightmarish place on the entire battlefield was appropriately named the Devil's Den. This jumble of huge boulders situated at the southern end of Houck's Ridge was truly a hell on earth…
New Jersey's Trolley Heritage is a photographic essay of trolley cars that once served Atlantic City, Ocean City, and Wildwood, plus the modernized Newark City subway, along with the new Hudson-Bergen Light Rail Line and River Line. From 1889 to 195…
John T. Farnham, a sharpshooter in the Union Army, wrote a substantial diary entry nearly every day during his three-year enlistment, sent over 50 long articles to his hometown newspaper, and mailed some 600 letters home. He described training, batt…
Mountains and Molehills is essential reading for anyone wishing to build a mental picture of San Francisco and the Sacramento areas during the period of the Gold Rush from 1850 to 1852. With wit and charming powers of description, Marryat paints a p…
A 712th Tank Battalion veteran of Patton's Third Army returned home after the Second World War, but for over fifty years rarely speaks of his wartime experiences. His son grows to manhood with only a perception of combat gleaned from the movies of h…
In 1913, Frank Barnwell designed the Bristol Scout, which was the fastest and most manoeuvrable warplane for the first eighteen months of the First World War, and became the prototype single-seat fighter from which all later fighters were derived. A…
The Toronto Beaches Lions Club Easter Parade of April 8, 2012 leading off with Toronto Transit Commission historic Presidents' Conference Committee car No. 4500, vintage Peter Witt car No. 2766, and Canadian Light Rail Vehicle No. 4074 in this view…
Combat gliders were called by some as Death Crates, Purple Heart Boxes, Flying Coffins and Tow Targets . They were not pretty and had no graceful lines. Viewed from the front, they had a pug nose and a sloping Neanderthal forehead. Their wings looke…
New Jersey marks its 350th birthday this year (2014) and what better way to celebrate than to delve into its rich colonial past in New Jersey's Colonial Architecture Told in 100 Buildings. Today, in this most developed and crowded of states, a surpr…
The cities of Pennsylvania are littered with the redundant relics. Behind closed doors and hidden deep in forests, there are decaying secrets waiting to be discovered. At the start of the twentieth century, migrants were drawn to the up-and-coming i…
In 1933 Germany became a dictatorship under the Great War veteran Adolf Hitler. He pulled the country out of depression and set it to work, reducing unemployment by undertaking extensive public works and building the first autoroutes in the world. H…
You might be surprised to learn that many of the consumer brands and products enjoyed in the USA today exist because of streetcar advertising. The Industrial Revolution of the early 1900s and a massive consumer audience riding over 50,000 streetcars…
The year 1938-39 was when Hitler set out on the road of pre-war bloodless conquests, which led to the actual shooting combat over Poland in September 1939. Both willing and unwilling, Hermann Goering was his main acolyte in achieving the peaceful mi…
The discovery of gold on the magical date of January 24, 1848, when James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill near Coloma, started a rush that was unprecedented in all of the world's history. The discovery started a boom period to the state th…
The Texans from Hood's Texas Brigade and other regiments who fought at Antietam on 16-17 September 1862 described their experiences of the battle in personal diaries, interviews, newspaper articles, letters, and speeches. Their reminiscences provide…
The Great Northern Railway Through Time takes us on a tour of the American Northwest-the last American frontier-from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington. The Great Northern opened up the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, the dramatic Cascade Mountain…
