Matt Fratus is a history staff writer for Coffee or Die. He prides himself on uncovering the most fascinating tales of history by sharing them through any means of engaging storytelling. He writes for his micro-blog @LateNightHistory
Charles McGee, one of the last surviving members of the celebrated all-Black Tuskegee Airmen, died in his sleep Sunday morning, Jan. 16. He was 102. McGee saw combat in three wars, flying 409 combat missions in World War II, the Korean War, and ...
Pilates routines have swept through studios and home gyms alike since the turn of the 21st century, but the popular workouts may have originated as a way to counter "barbed wire disease" within a World War I internment camp. German-born exercise ...
Jewish American businessman Si Spiegel — the "king of the artificial Christmas tree" — made millions building his empire but is also among the last surviving bomber pilots of World War II. Spiegel, now 97, flew 35 dangerous combat missions over ...
A deafening explosion echoed across the Ulithi Atoll in the West Caroline Islands around 5:45 a.m. Nov. 20, 1944. The USS Mississinewa oil tanker anchored in the entrance of the Ulithi lagoon — the site of the massive refueling base for more than 200 ...
In December 2010, two Black Hawk helicopters carrying special operations soldiers from the Colombian military’s Rapid Deployment Force flew into the jungles of the Serranía de la Macarena, a sprawling national park south of Bogota. The soldiers ...
Lt. Col. Arthur “Ted” Ballard was an experienced Air Force aviator who flew dozens of combat missions in his F-105 jet. He earned a Distinguished Flying Cross before being shot down during a bombing run over North Vietnam in September 1966. He ...
Army 1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane, a nurse from the 312th Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai, Republic of Vietnam, was mortally wounded by enemy rocket fire only one month shy of her 26th birthday. The enthusiastic and compassionate medical professional ...
A sobering feeling rushed through me as I stood over a lawn-level gravesite marked “unknown.” Its only identifiable feature was its plot number: section D 130. At the National Memorial of the Pacific, commonly referred to as the Punchbowl, in ...
Inside the galley at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay in Honolulu, Hawaii, 63 World War II veterans — some who had been at Pearl Harbor — were eager to meet and share their stories with today's Marines. Armed with a camera and audio recorder, ...
On the left pectoral muscle of an active-duty Navy SEAL, a stenciled skeleton of a bone frog is traced and inked into his skin. The illustrative tattoo and a symbol of Navy SEALs, or “frogmen,” has taken on a life of its own. It is a replacement ...
A vintage picture of a Navy Underwater Demolition Team frogman has made its rounds on the internet. In the photo, a shirtless, muscular, tatted-up sailor is wearing khaki UDT shorts; his swim fins are draped around one wrist as he inspects his dive ...
At the 1972 Munich Olympics, 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage and later murdered by Palestinian terrorists. In response to the terrorist threat, the FBI set up the first full-time civilian counterterrorism team. Fast forward to 1983: ...
The British Special Air Service, or SAS, is among the most elite and revered special operations units in the world. In the service's storied history of global military operations, one very selective special unit known as the Artists Rifles rose ...
The year was 1985 and Richard Rice, a 37-year-old Green Beret with the 5th Special Forces Group, was holed up in a secured compound in a village located along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Rice was no rookie to the black arts of covert warfare. ...
A six-story building on the corner of Kingston and Bedford, located in the heart of Boston’s downtown neighborhood, erupted in a massive four-alarm fire on Thanksgiving Day, 1889. The blaze spread to adjacent buildings situated along the city block. ...
After a Soviet surface-to-air missile shot down a U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers in May 1960, US officials halted surveillance flights over the Soviet Union. The lost intelligence capability frustrated Chief of Naval Operations Adm. ...
Gen. William Sterling King was shot 21 times and suffered seven severe wounds in the Civil War Battle of Antietam. Following his service with Company K, 35th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, his well-earned reputation as a soldier segued him into his ...
In a remote desert in Uzbekistan during the 1960s, an endless stream of flames spewed into the air over the Urta-Bulak gas field for 1,064 straight days. Soviet efforts to extinguish the out-of-control blaze simply exacerbated problems for the ...
When NASA astronaut Stuart Roosa traveled to the moon on the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, the former US Forest Service smokejumper brought a small, sentimental science experiment along with him. While commander Alan Shepard and pilot Edgar Mitchell ...
Lt. Gen. Lewis “Chesty” Puller had a problem with ice cream. The Marine Corps legend, who earned an unprecedented five Navy Cross medals throughout his 37-year career, argued that ice cream was a “sissy food” and proposed that whiskey and beer were ...
New York City firefighters refer to the late 1960s and early 1970s as the “war years.” That time of extraordinary firefighting action was captured in a 1972 television documentary by the BBC, Man Alive: The Bronx Is Burning. “That’s where they got ...
On March 17, 1966, the space capsule carrying Neil Armstrong and David Scott, two NASA astronauts on the Gemini 8 mission, landed in the Pacific Ocean, marking the end of a historic spaceflight. Armstrong and Scott had just performed the first ...
When one hears Bambi's name, two things immediately come to mind. Firstly, the 1942 animated Disney movie. Secondly, how "Smalls" from The Sandlot believed "that wimpy deer" was the same as "the great bambino," the nickname of legendary New York ...
In the final instants before the guns fell silent on the 11th hour of Nov. 11, 1918, near the French village of Ville-devant-Chaumont, US Army Pvt. Henry Gunther became one of the last known soldiers to die in World War I. Feeling he still had ...
A definitive list of every US military veteran who served in combat roles in World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War hasn't yet, to our knowledge, seen completion. In the meantime, however, we put together a list of three notable veterans ...
The British Special Air Service created the blueprint for modern special operations forces. After World War II, numerous other nations adopted the SAS model to stand up their own selection courses, tactics, and techniques. Australia, for its part, ...
Lt. Col. Ace Cozzalio was among the most colorful characters of the Vietnam War. His three tours to Vietnam included death-defying scouting missions piloting his Hughes OH-6 light observation helicopter (or Loach) as well as gunship runs inside his ...
German intelligence intercepted Allied military correspondence throughout October 1918 during the Meuse-Argonne campaign. In response to the Allies' need to deliver coded messages to various front-line positions, the US Army enlisted the help of ...
On the eve of D-Day, Sgt. Jake McNiece stood on the runway in full combat gear. The part-Choctaw Indian from Oklahoma had his face covered with war paint and his hair shaved into a mohawk. Twelve more Americans followed suit. The intrepid group ...
A section of rope was replaced with piano wire, then rolled in glue and crushed glass. It was an up-close-and-personal weapon of choice for “Wild Bill” Emerick, a former club brawler from Chicago who rescued wounded Marines from a kill zone in ...
