Newly released documents describe the U.S. Air Force’s secret cold war project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL) A newly released treasure trove of historical data reveals intriguing details about a secret Cold War project known as the Manned Orbiting Laboratory (MOL). The U.S. Air Force’s MOL program ran from December 1963 until its cancellation in…
Category: Military History
Cold War Files: Gary Powers, The U-2 Spy Pilot the U.S. Did Not Love
Steven Spielberg’s most recent movie, Bridge of Spies, tells the story of a Cold War prisoner exchange between the Soviet Union and the US. The deal allowed US spy plane pilot Gary Powers to return home – but once there he faced a chorus of criticism. Gary Powers had been in flight for four hours…
Historical Study: Mead and the Vikings
Being a European in the Early Middle Ages was rough. “Barbarians,” such as the Franks and Vandals that destroyed the Roman Empire were settling into kingdoms in their own right. Dynasties like the Carolingians and Merovingiansdominated Western Europe. Diseases, poverty, and starvation were rampant. However, the Early Middle Ages had another looming threat: Vikings. All…
Military History: The Lasting Influence of the Ancient Greeks on the Modern Military
Written more than two thousand years ago, texts by ancient Greeks still have a major impact on the modern militaries of today in numerous ways. At the start of the Cold War, the then US secretary of state, George Marshall, read the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, convinced that the events of the Peloponnesian War…
Historical Study: Ivan the Terrible’s Military Arsenal Found
The full arsenal of a military commander who served Ivan the Terrible has been uncovered in Russia, the Institute of Archaeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences has announced. Found during a survey for a highway expansion outside Zvenigorod, an ancient town 18 miles west of Moscow, the cache consists of helmets stored in leather…
Navy SEAL Sniper Instructor Describes America’s Best Marksman Ever
In this excerpt from The Red Circle: My Life In The Navy SEAL Sniper Corps And How I Trained America’s Deadliest Marksmen, former Navy SEAL sniper instructor Brandon Webb, describes the deadliest sniper in US military history. Everything I’d experienced in the navy up to this point, from those early days as an aircrew search-and-rescue…
Cold War Files: A ‘Texas Tower’ Veteran Reflects on Cold War History
KINGSLEY, Mich. — Each time Victor Rioux sits in a church pew he takes a minute to say a special prayer. He honors the 28 men who died during the Cold War when Texas Tower No. 4 collapsed amid a fierce winter storm. “I never forget those guys,” Rioux said from his Kingsley farm house….
10 Conflicts to Watch in 2016
Pulling together a list of the wars most in need of international attention and support in 2016 is challenging for all the wrong reasons. For 20 years after the end of the Cold War, deadly conflict was in decline. Fewer wars were killing fewer people the world over. Five years ago, however, that positive…
WW2 History: The Most Amazing Lie in History
How a chicken farmer, a pair of princesses, and 27 imaginary spies helped the Allies win World War II This story originally appeared in the September 2014 issue of Mental Floss Magazine. In the weeks leading up to D-day, Allied commanders had their best game faces on. “This operation is not being planned with any…
Ankara’s Hidden Hand: Turkish Covert Ops Then and Now
To put it mildly, Turkey has been substantially involved in Syria since the eruption of the Arab Spring in 2011. After Turkish F-16s recently downed a Su-24 Russian tactical bomber over the region where Turkmen anti-Assad groups are based, Turkish President Erdogan tacitly confirmed Turkey’s covert support for Syrian rebels fighting against Damascus, stating that “anyone…