This is an article from The Atlantic in 2006 but I thought it a great read on the History of the IRA from the British perspective.-SF I first met the man now called Kevin Fulton in London, on Platform 13 at Victoria Station. We almost missed each other in the crowd; he didn’t look at…
Category: Historical Study
World War II History: Separating Fact from Fiction About the Polish Air Force
When the 1950s T.V. documentary series Air Power got around to covering the opening battles of World War II, it unfortunately reinforced a popular, and entirely incorrect, notion. “The Polish air force is caught on the ground,” narrator Walter Cronkite grumbled over images of German bombers pummeling Polish installations. “The Polish air force is destroyed…
History of Terrorism: The Bloody History of the Red Right Hand
This is but one of many thousands of chapters of violence in the History of the Fighting between the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force (UFV), also called the Red Right Hand. -SF There was collusion between some police officers and loyalist gunmen who killed six Catholics 22 years ago, a report by NI’s Police…
World War II History: 8 Famous People Who Served on D-Day
Monday was the 72nd anniversary of D-Day. On June 6, 1944, the Allies embarked on the crucial invasion of Normandy on the northern coast of France. Allied forces suffered major casualties, but the ensuing campaign ultimately dislodged German forces from France. Did you know these eight famous individuals participated in the D-Day invasion? James Doohan Actor James…
Military History: 10 Amazing Military Underdog Stories
Underdogs have a special place in the hearts of many, whether it’s the upstart Celtic Iceni tribe led by Boudicca revolting against the Romans or the ice-veined Spartans fighting in one of history’s greatest last stands against the Persians at Thermopylae. Either through superior tactics or more technologically advanced weaponry, the outnumbered often achieve some…
Brush-Up On Your History: The Little Known Story of Operation Tonga
As part of Operation Tonga, the British airborne component of Operation Neptune (the official name of the D-Day), the 9th Parachute Battalion was tasked with capturing the Merville Gun Battery, whose guns were trained on Sword Beach and the British troops who would be assaulting it on the morning of the invasion. The gun battery’s defenses…
World War II History: The US Army Rangers and Point Du Hoc
One of the highlights of my last trip to France was the three days I spent in Normandy, site of the D-Day invasion. As a professional military guy, this is one of the coolest possible trips because the Normandy campaign had it all – amphibious assaults, airborne drops, tank battles, joint firepower, fighters and bombers,…
World War Two History: The First German-Soviet Military Pact And The Origins of World War II
Before dawn on June 22, 1941, German bombers began to rain destruction down on a swath of Soviet cities from Leningrad to Sevastopol. It was the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in the history of the world. By the end of the day, three million German soldiers and their allies crossed the…
American History: How Ayatollah Khomeini Suckered Jimmy Carter (And How Obama Got Suckered Too)
The Ayatollah Khomeini was using taqiyya in its classic sense. The concept of taqiyya as such is specifically Shi’ite, developed during the time of the sixth Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, in middle of the eighth century, when the Shi’ites were being persecuted by the Sunni caliph al-Mansur. Taqiyya allowed Shi’ites to pretend to be Sunnis in…
Obscure World War II History: The Failed Japanese Coup of 1945
A last-ditch attempt to overthrow the Japanese government at the end of World War II was a bloody embarrassment Open Road Media sponsored this post. By August 1945 more than two million Japanese soldiers, sailors and aviators had died in eight years of war stretching from China and Southeast Asia to halfway across the Pacific….