Category: History

The Italian military went into WWI having already adopted a semiautomatic sidearm – the Model 1910 Glisenti (and its somewhat simplified Brixia cousin). However, the 1910 Glisenti was a very complex design, and much too expensive to be practical for the needs of the global cataclysm that was the Great War. In response to a […]

Army Capt. Paul “Buddy” Bucha faked out the enemy while leading a motley crew in Vietnam. (FOX)- The Medal of Honor recipient was hailed as a hero after he made North Vietnamese fighters believe his 187th Infantry Regiment was much bigger than it really was. The combination of bravery and cunning helped him earn the […]

One of the last two surviving members of the Doolittle Raiders — who bombed Japan in an attack that stunned that nation and boosted U.S. morale — has died in Montana, his family said. (FOX)- Retired Staff Sgt. David Jonathan Thatcher died Wednesday in a Missoula hospital. He was 94. He suffered a stroke on […]

A judge in Louisville has given the city the go-ahead to remove an 1895 Confederate monument by dismissing a lawsuit that sought to keep it at its original site. (FOX)- In a written ruling, Jefferson Circuit Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman said the city had the right to remove the stone obelisk near the University of Louisville […]

A 94-year-old former SS sergeant who served as a guard at Auschwitz has been found guilty of more than 170,000 counts of accessory to murder on allegations he helped the Nazi death camp kill 1.1 million Jews and others. BERLIN –(FOX)- The dpa news agency reported that the Detmold state court sentenced Reinhold Hanning to […]

The FR-8 is a Spanish rifle manufactured in the 1950s as part of Spain’s adoption of the CETME semiautomatic rifles. Spain was not only moving to their first semiauto rifle, but also changing from 8mm Mauser to the new 7.62mm NATO. It was not possible to immediately equip everybody with the new rifles, so a […]

William Whiting was an engineer who spent his entire adult career with the Webley company, and was responsible for all of their in-house self-loading pistol designs. This work initially focused on a behemoth of a pistol, the Model 1904 intended for military contracts. The gun proved insufficiently attractive to the British military though, leaving Webley […]

The ship was fashioned after the Titanic, and met an end no less tragic, but the tale of the Cap Arcona—and the thousands of concentration-camp prisoners who lost their lives aboard it—is one you’ve likely never heard. (FOX)- The “Nazi Titanic” gets its due in a new book of the same name by Robert P. […]

The U.S. flag flown on the stern of the boat that led the first American troops onto Utah Beach on D-Day was sold on Sunday for $514,000 at auction in Texas. (FOX)- Heritage Auctions spokesman Noah Fleisher says the 48-star flag from the guide boat was sold during a live auction in Dallas. Fleisher had […]

Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful invasion of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation commenced on 6 June 1944 with the Normandy landings(Operation Neptune, commonly known as D-Day). A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 […]