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
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
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 readingRobert 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
As we posted recently, the Coast Guard has been busy breaking ice in New York Harbor. The current forecasts suggest that the frigid weather is likely to continue for several more weeks, so the ice breaking is also expected to … Continue reading
Last week, Rear Admiral Michael Day retired after more than 40 years of service in the US Coast Guard. Over his career, he served in a range of responsible positions, in locations ranging from the Arctic to Taiwan and throughout … Continue reading
Tonight, roughly a million revelers will watch in person in New York’s Times Square, and over a billion viewers are expected to watch on television or online, as the New Year’s Eve ball drop rings in 2026 with a dazzling … Continue reading
An interrupted broadcast of a football game, a newsbreak during a performance by the New York Philharmonic, a weather report followed by an announcement from President Roosevelt that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Reports of attacks on the Philippines. Here … Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving to those on this side of the pond and below the 49th parallel. (The Canadians celebrated the holiday in October.) What do whaling ships, a child’s nursery rhyme, a female magazine editor, and Abraham Lincoln have to do … Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving! On Thanksgiving eve, here is a short video of the voyage of the Mayflower II across the Atlantic in 1957, under the command of Captain Alan Villiers. The reproduction was built in Devon, England, during 1955–1956, in a collaboration between Englishman Warwick … Continue reading
An updated repost. There is a line from a Paul Simon song, “These are the days of miracle and wonder.” One might not think to apply that lyric to the events of 9/11, 24 years ago today. Yet for at … Continue reading