Captain Hansen Gregory
Today is National Donut Day. Why is there a national day for donuts? The day celebrates an event created by The Salvation Army in Chicago in 1938 to honor those of their members who served doughnuts to soldiers during World War I.
But who invented the modern donut? Many credit Hansen Crockett Gregory, 1832-1921, a ship’s captain from Rockport, Maine. Here is the “hole story.”
The first donuts in America did not have holes. They are believed to have been introduced to the continent by the Dutch who fried dough in oil. Washington Irving was the first to mention doughnuts in “The History of New York” in 1807. We wrote, “[I]t was always sure to boast of an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog’s fat, and called dough-nuts, or oly koeks: a delicious kind of cake, at present known scarce to this city, except in genuine Dutch families.”
On Sunday, an overloaded chartered houseboat on Italy’s Lake Maggiore was caught in a sudden, violent storm and capsized, killing four of the 21 passengers and two crew. Sadly, this sort of boating accident, while tragic, is not entirely out of the ordinary.
For more than a decade, 
A year ago, 
Last year 
Recent videos of a sea drone attack on a Russian warship released by Russia’s Defence Ministry and by Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne tell two very different stories of the encounter.
In 2019, we 
An updated repost on 
We now have the answer why the Royal Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, 
The 112-year-old steel-hulled 
Orca attacks on sailboats off the Strait of Gibraltar and the Iberian Peninsula continue.
The 
The 
An updated repost appropriate for Mother’s Day.
The three-masted, gaff-rigged Chesapeake ram schooner 
In late November of last year, the guided-missile destroyer, USS Momsen, and the dock-landing ship, USS Harpers Ferry, were moving in opposite directions in San Diego Bay when they came close to colliding. The two ships came within 35 yards of each other but were able to avert disaster through some last-minute maneuvering.