We recently saw how the Austrian army has the honor of being the only one to have fought against itself. It seems that Austria has a certain magnet for unusual military events, because it was in the Austrian town of Itter, in Tyrol, that one of the strangest battles of the entire Second World War to
Following the Nazi invasion of Crete in May 1941, British and other Commonwealth forces that had been involved in the defense were evacuated to Egypt and other Allied-controlled territories. But at the same time that the evacuation was taking place, the Special Operations Directorate (SOE) introdu
One of the most appreciated equine breeds in the world is the lipizana . Originally from the region of Lipizza (Slovenia) as an evolution of an autochthonous horse with other racial mixtures (fundamentally Spanish, but also Arab, Neapolitan and Kladruber), it was from the 16th century when it reache
Of all the bizarre weapons projects that were thought during the Second World War , and there are a few really peculiar ones that one day would be worth compiling in an article, one of the most imaginative and daring was the one named Habbakuk Project . To put it simply, it had to be an ice aircraf
In 1941, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a difficult outlook ahead of him, such as maintaining the neutrality of the United States in World War II. At least that was the promise he had made to his citizens only a year before. In practice, US aid to the Allies was already being developed in ma
History is full of cases like the one we are dealing with today. Often little known, in others directly ignored, but which represented an important change in the historical future. Its protagonists were people like Witold Pilecki . This is the story of him. Pilecki was born in 1901 in Olonets, in w
Before 1996, little or nothing was known about the Ghost Army (Ghost Army ) that the Americans created during World War II. The documents and images attesting to its existence had been kept secret for decades. Many of them are still classified today and are difficult to access. The Ghost Army was a
Many historians believe that the 20th century really began with the First World War and that the previous fourteen years were nothing more than an epilogue to the previous one. With regard to naval combat, this great conflict of global scope led to the generalization of submarines, the confirmation
The other day we saw here the adventures of Felix Graf von Luckner, a German sailor with a bizarre life who practiced privateering aboard a sailboat during the First World War. Today we are going to tell another no less eventful story that also happened during that war and, likewise, began aboard a
The 9º Reggimento d’Assalto Paracadutisti Col Moschin , one of the elite forces of the Italian army, is popularly known as Arditi incursori , which means bold raiders. But this nickname derives not so much from its operational capacity as from its historical background:a shock corps created during t
A couple of days ago we took a look at the first steps of robotic military technology in the article dedicated to BigDog . Seeing the photo that heads todays one, anyone would venture to suppose that we continue along the same lines, analyzing experimental weapons that are probably the foundations o
There is a curious story about a British soldier and I meet him with Adolf Hitler on the battlefield during the First World War. It is curious because, from the available documentation (mainly press articles and correspondence) two things can be deduced:that both were convinced of having had that me
A few months ago we dedicated an article to tell the exciting story of the SMS Emden , a ship of the German Imperial Navy that during the First World War was dedicated to practicing privateering in the Indian Ocean, constituting a nightmare for the enemy until the cruiser HMS Sidney of the Royal Nav
On May 24, 1956, the City Hospital of Welfare Island (New York) recorded the death of one of its patients, a seventy-eight-year-old man who had been in poor physical and mental health for a couple of years. . But taking a look at his life, it could be said that few lived it as intensely as he did. H
That a merchant ship throws its cargo overboard to make room on board persecuted people at serious risk of being killed is something that should have made its crew and captain go down in history. With gold letters, too. However, that action, which was real and took place in the port of Izmir in 1922
Two cruisers flying the Ottoman flag that were not Ottoman but German; two crews dressed in Turkish uniforms but mostly made up of suspiciously blond and pale-skinned sailors; two vessels named Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli whose real names were Goeben and Breslau and that they bombed the cities o
The First World War does not receive that name for its own sake, nor is it a hyperbole. No less than 38 countries from all continents officially participated in that contest, that is, they proclaimed themselves belligerent:twenty of them allied (plus another 9 that supported them without participati
In the year 1918, just after the First World War, the American journalist, writer and diplomat Herman Bernstein published a book entitled The Willy–Nicky correspondence . It was an anthology of private telegrams that Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm had sent each other over several years, on the
If I review the term Haber Process and accompany it with descriptive words such as industry, ammonia, nitrogen, fertilizer and energy consumption, it is almost inevitable that most will come to mind the image of factories working by the piece, releasing columns of smoke into the air through its long
Before James Cameron made it big with Titanic , there were other films that dealt with the subject. One of them was The last night of the Titanic (A night to remember ), the biggest-budget British production to date, directed by Roy Ward Baker in 1958. To show the famous ocean liner on the screen,
March 2, 1770 (Lyon) - January 3, 1826 (Marseille) Suchet, Louis-Gabriel, Duke of Albufera The son of a silk worker, endowed with a solid education, Suchet joined the National Guard of Lyon in 1791 and rose there in the hierarchy to the rank of captain. Elected lieutenant-colonel by the volunte
The French Revolution , which took place in 1789, was the event that, according to some authors, inaugurated the so-called Contemporary Age . The historians of the 19th century, who made the dividing line in History, attributed to this event the character of a divider mark between the Modern and Con
Almost 100 years have passed from the discovery of his tomb by the British Egyptologist Howard Carter . Tutankhamun continues today to keep the attention of the researchers high not only because of the intact funerary collection that surrounded him, found in his tomb despite his early death
Probably many readers will know who Martha Ellis Gellhorn was but, for those who dont, tell them that she is not one of those characters that sometimes get shoehorned into war movies. She was the only woman known to have landed in Normandy on D-Day covering World War II as a reporter, just as she ha