In the early 1900s, Hiram Percy Maxim was a New York-born inventor with a passion for pioneering automobiles. He patented a gas-powered bicycle and helped design an early automobile, built in Hartford, Connecticut. But he heard his real calling in ...
The Last Surviving Woman To Have Served as a World War II British Spy Turns 100
Phyllis “Pippa” Latour Doyle celebrated her 100th birthday Thursday, but for the majority of her life, the reluctant hero kept a secret from everyone. Not even her children were aware of her experiences in World War II until her son read about them ...
The Real Voice Behind ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’
“Goooooood morning, Vietnam!” Adrian Cronauer boomed out his signature drawn-out greeting. “It’s just a smidgen past five after six, and here we go with another day’s version of the Dawn Buster show from the Armed Forces Radio.” Cronauer was the ...
How a First Nation Canadian Became World War I’s Deadliest Sniper
When night fell, Francis “Peggy” Pegahmagabow left his trench, moving past the barbed wire and into No Man’s Land. On any given night, he’d sneak by the wounded and the dying soldiers from the European front as they lay crying for help from inside ...
The Marine Who Went to Parris Island at 50
He wasn’t like the rest of the aspiring Marines who arrived at Parris Island in 1942. Paul Douglas had some miles on him. At 50, Douglas wore glasses, was wrinkled in the face, and had gray hair. He was more than twice as old as nearly all his fellow ...
The Tun Tavern: Of Course the US Marine Corps Was Founded in a Brewery
Every Marine knows the date: Nov. 10, 1775. It was the day the US Marine Corps (then called the Continental Marines) was born. The Second Continental Congress ordered that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service at sea and on shore. Marine ...
Douglas Munro: The Coast Guard’s 1st and Only Medal of Honor Recipient
“Did they get off?” asked Signalman 1st Class Douglas Munro. He had just been struck in the neck by a Japanese bullet at the helm of a landing craft off Guadalcanal, desperately trying to evacuate 500 ambushed Marines. His best friend, Signalman 1st ...
Wreckage Found Of Famous World War II Destroyer Whose Commander Was Posthumously Awarded the Medal of Honor
A team of deep diving explorers last week located the final resting place of one of World War II's most famous lost ships, the USS Johnston, a Fletcher-class destroyer (DD-557) led by one of the Navy's most legendary fighting commanders. A team of ...
‘Hold and Die’ — The Marine Who Became a Legend on Easter Sunday
On Easter Sunday, April 2, 1972, Capt. John Ripley surveyed the Dong Ha bridge over the Cua Viet River in South Vietnam’s Quang Tri province. The 32-year-old former enlisted Marine was on his second tour. He had survived a previous engagement five ...
For April Fools’ Day, This World War II Veteran Brought an Alaska Volcano to Life
Oliver J. “Porky” Bickar rolled out of bed on April Fools’ Day, 1974, looked out his window to a white-topped mountain outside Sitka, Alaska, and told his wife, Patty, “I have to do it today.” She replied with age-old words of wisdom: “Don’t make an ...
Stephanie Kwolek: The Chemist Who Invented Kevlar
On the morning of Dec. 21, 2012, Pennsylvania State Trooper Timothy Strohmeyer was pursuing a man who had just murdered three people. With Strohmeyer and other police closing in, Jeffrey Lee Michael rammed his Ford F-250 truck into another trooper’s ...
Alan Turing, World War II’s Greatest Code Breaker, Becomes New Face of £50 Note
Some 70 years after his own government turned its back on his vital work to defeat Nazi Germany, the Bank of England announced this month that an image of Alan Turing will appear on the new 50-pound note in commemoration of his legacy. Turing's ...
The Montagnard People: America’s Forgotten Vietnam Veterans
Wearing an enemy uniform and crawling alone through dark tunnels under a Vietnamese mountain, K’Sao Krajan fought alongside soldiers of the 5th Special Forces Group. His actions were as fierce and heroic as those of any among that unit. With the ...
The Night a Vietnam Medic Rushed To Save an NHL Goalie Bleeding Out on the Ice
As soon as he saw the blood, James Pizzutelli got ready to move. He didn’t know it yet, but the athletic trainer for the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres had just witnessed one of the most gruesome sports injuries ever captured on a live broadcast (GRAPHIC video ...
Why This Heroic Navy Diver Was Awarded the Medal of Honor After a Submarine Sank
Chief Gunner's Mate Frank William Crilley recognized the urgency unfolding 265 feet below the surface. Responding to a lost submarine in April 1915, a fellow Navy diver was operating at extreme depths when his life line and air hose became tangled in ...
The FANYs: The Nurses Who Became Commandos During World War II
As members of England's First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, or FANYs, during World War II, Odette Sansom, Violette Szabó, and Noor Inayat Khan might have worked in hospitals, driven ambulances, sent coded radio signals, fixed trucks, or even, as one FANY did ...
War & Peace: The Historic Meeting Between President Nixon and Japanese Emperor Hirohito in Alaska
On the night of Sept. 26, 1971, Emperor Hirohito landed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. It was late — 10 p.m. — when the 70-year-old emerged from his plane with Empress Nagako by his side. The couple gingerly walked down the steps ...
9 Women Have Been Awarded the Silver Star — Here Are Their Stories
The year 1932 was interesting for military decorations. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur successfully revived Gen. George Washington’s Badge for Military Merit of 1782, which became known as the Purple Heart, a medal given to those wounded ...
How Irish American Spymaster ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan Earned His Nickname
William J. “Wild Bill” Donovan is most revered for his role as the director of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) — the premier paramilitary and intelligence unit that emerged during World War II and served as the precursor to the CIA. Before he ...
Donna Tobias: The 1st Female Deep Sea Diver in US Military History
The course of 10 rigorous weeks at the Second Class Diving School saw about 44 out of 100 candidates graduate each year. The school, held at the time at the Naval Amphibious Base in Little Creek, Virginia, prepared deep sea divers for underwater ...
The Mother of Wi-Fi: Hollywood Actress Hedy Lamarr’s Wartime Invention
Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-born actress whose dark-haired beauty inspired the cartoon characters of Snow White and Catwoman. Starring in roles alongside Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Jimmy Stewart, she had fame, fortune, and glamour. She was also ...
How An SR-71 Blackbird Engineer Helped 3rd Graders With A School Project
Mrs. Jaffe, as she was known to her third grade students at Ambrose Elementary School in Winchester, Massachusetts, mailed a special package to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Inside was a small paper cutout of a bear, detailed ...
The Dahomey Amazons: Fearless Female Warriors Who Inspired the Dora Milaje in the Movie ‘Black Panther’
In 2018, Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong’o starred in the popular Marvel superhero movie Black Panther. The film introduced viewers to an elite all-female guard known as the Dora Milaje. Sworn to protect the King of Wakanda in the fictional kingdom ...
The Four Square Laundry Service and the Undercover Female Operator Who Ran It
A green Bedford Commer van with the name Four Square Laundry painted on its side pulled into the Twinbrook estate neighborhood on the outskirts of Belfast. Sarah Jane Warke opened the passenger door, stepped out, and approached the front entrance of ...
The Woman Behind This Iconic Photograph Was a Symbol of the French Resistance
We’ve all seen the iconic photograph: the young woman wearing shorts, a checkered shirt, and a French beret and holding an MP-40 submachine gun, looking down the side of a building, while two French Resistance fighters flank her. The look of ...
Deeds Not Words: The Suffragettes Who Established the Only Female-Staffed Hospital in World War I
At the turn of the 20th century, women in the medical field were only allowed to treat other women or children. When the war broke out across Europe in 1914, Louisa Garrett Anderson, the daughter of Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Britain’s first ...
Who Was the 1st Female Smokejumper in the US Forest Service?
In 1979, there wasn’t a single woman working a fire season as a smokejumper in the United States. Since their beginnings in 1939, the smokejumpers were exclusively an all-male unit, famously known as the wildland firefighters who parachuted from ...
‘The White Mouse’: How Nancy Wake Became the Heroine of the French Resistance
The Gestapo didn’t know who she was. The Nazi secret police who were notorious for capturing Allied spies only knew of her legend — a beautiful and mysterious woman who would slip away from capture each time they closed in. The Gestapo referred to ...
Marlene Dietrich: The Blond Bombshell Who Broke the Nazis With Her Voice
The blond bombshell was a megastar by 1937. Made famous by the movie The Blue Angel in 1930, Marlene Dietrich was Germany’s most revered actress, singer, and performer. She was independent and expressive, both in her openness in her bisexuality and ...
The Red Ball Express: How African American Truck Drivers Supplied Patton’s 3rd Army in World War II
Six weeks after more than a million American, British, and Canadian troops invaded Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, Lt. Gen. Omar Bradley launched Operation Cobra. The mission was to break out from the stalemate where the Allies were wedged in a ...