Today, March 8th, is celebrated as International Women’s Day (IWD), commemorating women’s fight for equality and liberation along with the women’s rights movement. International Women’s Day is intended to focus on issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence … Continue reading
Millennium Challenge 2002 Just over two decades ago, the United States ran a major war game exercise called Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02). Millennium Challenge was a hybrid exercise that combined live troops, real ships, and aircraft. Massive computer simulations operated … Continue reading
In a time when the US Navy seems incapable of designing and building ships that are not significantly over budget and behind schedule, it is good to remember Raye Montague, a pioneering American naval engineer who helped revolutionize the way … Continue reading
Around 650 years ago, off the eastern tip of Singapore, a trading vessel slipped beneath the waves and vanished from history. It carried bowls painted with ducks and lotus flowers — porcelain so exquisite that even the Chinese emperor sought … Continue reading
Hugh Mulzak served as the first Black Liberty ship captain in World War II. When offered the command, he refused to sail with a segregated crew. An updated repost in honor of Black History Month. Born in 1886 on Union … Continue reading
At a time when programs supporting the American values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are being banned in schools across the nation, it is incumbent on the rest of us to keep alive the history that some are now seeking … Continue reading
Donald Trump bragged that his administration would recruit “only the best people.” Instead, his regime is the very definition of a kakistocracy, a system of government run by the least qualified, most unprincipled, or worst citizens. Trump’s unhinged Attorney General, … Continue reading
Last Sunday, on a frigid day on the Navesink River in Red Bank, NJ, the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club (HRIYC) won back the Van Nostrand Challenge Cup from the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club (NSIBYC), which held … Continue reading
Last Tuesday, the 3,080 passenger cruise ship, Emerald Princess, approached Nawiliwili Harbor, on Kauai’s southeast coast, in Hawaii. Nawiliwili was the ship’s first port of call after departing from Los Angeles on a 16-night Hawaiian Islands itinerary. The National Weather … Continue reading
On Valentine’s Day, a few Valentine Islands. Are they islands of love on the storm-tossed seas of life? Sadly, they are probably not, but at least they do resemble Valentine’s Day hearts. … Continue reading
Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught or get clear, I’ll try it. I may as well die with ague as with fever. I have only one life to lose. I may as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it: one hundred miles north, and I am free! Try it ? Yes ! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water…
Continue readingA global internet poll has named a new species of deep-sea chiton – a type of marine mollusc – from the genus Ferreiraella. The chiton was discovered in 2024 in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench of the coast of Japan at a depth … Continue reading
Martin Luther King Jr. popularized the saying, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” It would be pleasant to think that this is always the case. Given the recent political climate, the quote may be overly … Continue reading
Robert Smalls is an American hero, well worth celebrating every day of the year, not only during Black History Month. An updated repost in honor of the remarkable story of Robert Smalls. On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old … Continue reading
Updated: Several blog readers pointed out that in focusing on the history of Harriet Tubman and her leadership in the Great Combahee Ferry Raid, I failed to mention the bridge over the Combahee River named in her honor. (Thanks, Doug … Continue reading