The Apache of the American southwest were famous for their resilience and fierce fighting qualities. The Gadsden Purchase of 1853 gave away the heart of their homeland, leading to an end to the Apache's way of life, setting off a 50-year war of extermination.
On May 27, 2016, seventy-one years after "Little Boy's" fireball vaporized Hiroshima, President Barack Obama visited ground zero. The first sitting American President to ever visit Hiroshima or Nagasaki. He remarked that the bombing had shown that mankind now possessed the means to destroy itself.
During the final days of the Second World War in Europe, Allied bombers destroyed the historic city of Dresden, in eastern Germany. The bombing was a controversial act of violence since the city held little military importance, nor was it a major industrial center.
During the closing months of WWII, the brilliant brothers, Walter and Reimar Horten, revived the concept of the flying wing. It had superb handling qualities and radar-evading technology. Herman Goring was so interested in the project he ordered 40 of these aircraft with the designation Ho-229.
Walter Blume designed the Ar-234 Blitz in 1941 with a small company in Germany, Arado. It was designed as a high-altitude jet bomber, it introduced an automatic pilot, ejector seat and brake parachutes. It entered service in 1944 and was also used in high altitude reconnaissance.
Bletchley Park set the stage for an improbable gathering of heroes whose work changed the face of modern warfare. You couldn't get much further from the battlefront than Bletchley Park in the 1930s, but this English estate would bring about the triumph of the "geek" or the "nerd."
The response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1991 began with 42 consecutive days and nights of the most intensive aerial bombardment since WWII. It introduced a new type of warfare, that of stealth, where invisibility tipped the scales on the battlefield. The Nighthawk became the face of stealth.
Allied commanders determined the best path into the industrial heartland of Germany was through the flat plains of northern Europe. It would require assaulting the Siegfried Line, an area where the Germans had re-enforced with elite and experienced soldiers well prepared for extensive fighting.
The battle for the bridge at Remagen resulted in both the American and German armies deploying new weapons and tactics in combat for the first time in history. It also gave the American army a bridge to cross the Rhine and an opportunity to advance deep into the German heartland and shorten the war.
In the fall of 1944, Adolf Hitler needed to turn the tide of war on the Western Front. His target was the vital port of Antwerp. If Nazi forces occupied the port, American and British forces north of France were trapped and cut off without an escape route by sea.
During World War II, the Battle of Kursk in 1943 marked a turning point on the Russian front. Hitler's Waffen SS divisions would attempt a breakthrough near the village of Prokhorovka using their massive Tiger tanks.
The battle for the Hürtgen Forest was a series of bloody battles fought in the fall of 1944 between American and German forces along the Siegfried Line in the latter half of the Second World War. It would prove to be one of the bloodiest victories for the Allies in all of the Second World War.
The struggle for Devil’s Den near Gettysburg on July 2, 1863, took place along a rocky ridge where soldiers dressed in blue and grey died at an alarming rate in an effort to end the Civil War's bloodiest battle. Lee's attempt to threaten Washington was thwarted by the Army of the Potomac.
On August 6, 1945, a bomb was dropped on Hiroshima; it released the power of the stars, showering the city with a massive amount of heat and light. Code-named Little Boy, it altered the course of human history and set man on the road to self-destruction.
The exploration of space is man's greatest challenge. Project Appollo represents mankind's greatest step toward to achieving that goal. Man entered a new age of exploration as billions from earth watched astronauts walk on the moon and beam back images of our blue planet from space on July 20,1969.
The SR-72 is one the world's most secretive aircraft skipping along near the edge of space unseen by those of us on the ground. It has a cruising speed of 4567 mph, Mach 6, leaving it untouchable to our enemies. Known as the Aurora, it flies out of legendary Area 51 and is cloaked in secrecy.
In December 1944, Adolf Hitler planned a surprise offensive to win a war that already seemed lost. Joachim Peiper led the attack which called for a lightning thrust to assault and capture the bridges over Belgium's Meuse River. His attack would go down in history as brutal and senseless endeavor.
In the summer of 1940, Hitler's legions of tanks and dive bombers crashed through a small town in the Ardennes smashing the Allied defensive line opening France to invading German armies. As the German tanks raced toward the Channel Coast a new concept of mobile warfare was revealed to the world.
On July 5, 1943, Nazi and Red Army tanks clashed near Kursk, two million men supported by over six thousand tanks met for an epic struggle which became one of the most important military engagements in history. It signaled the end of Nazi military dominance over Soviet forces on the Eastern front.
During the Second World War, Otto Skorzeny led several daring operations including the daring Grand Sasso raid which rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity and a certain death. Skorzeny's life after the war is shrouded in mystery after walking out of a prisoner of war camp after the war.
Carl Sagan's eloquence on television and the printed page was a dramatic pulling force in the 1980s leading many Americans to follow scientific careers. He was a powerful advocate of the Voyager missions which have entered interstellar space and are now the most distant man-made objects from Earth.
A remote tavern in the Ozark wilderness would become a focal point for the largest and most deadly battle west of the Mississippi River during the Civil War. Possession of the Elkhorn Tavern would determine if Missouri remained with the Union or became part of the Confederacy.
Hitler would unleash the V-2, one of his most terrifying wonder weapons on Antwerp, Belgium, in the fall of 1944, hoping to strike horror among its citizens. He expected it to turn the tide of war against the Allies as their troops were poised to invade Germany.
The French military defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 marked the end of their involvement in southeast Asia after a three-decade effort to colonize the area. Their brutal occupation and arrogance would prove to be their downfall.
The citizens of Kansas would live in a constant state of readiness as Confederate guerillas roamed the countryside burning free staters farms and taking anything of value. William Quantrill would lead many Confederate guerillas on raids throughout Missouri and Kansas.
The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918 was the most devastating epidemic in history. Before the pandemic faded away, it would kill between 20 million and 40 million people more than any other outbreak of disease in human history. As we deal with COVID 19 we revisit the nightmare.
In 1942 Japan's blitzkrieg throughout the Southwest Pacific left the world holding its breath. After Singapore fell, it seemed to be only a matter of time until Australia would fall victim to Japan's aggression. It would take the insidious ultra-secret weapon "Magic" to save Australia from invasion.
Few battles in history where the course of events tipped so dramatically as they did in the battle for Midway. The Battle of Midway demonstrated that this new kind of fighting had surely replaced battleship warfare and made the carrier the most important vessel of World War II.
The battle for Iwo Jima would leave both sides involved, shaken by the sheer scale of violence as they fought for this tiny volcanic island in the Pacific Ocean. Of the 21,000 Japanese defending the island, less than 200 would survive; it would become the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history.
On June 6,1944, Allied troops assaulted the beaches of Normandy, they had to breach a massive concrete coastal defense system with over 15,000 strong points known as the "Atlantic Wall". One of those troops would write the "Catcher in the Rye" a novel that set the stage for post for war alienation.
Eddie Rickenbacker would become one of the world's first pioneers of flight, leading the world into commercial aviation by buying Eastern Airlines in 1938. But first he would lead the United States during the First World War as one of the twentieth century's " Ace of Aces."
The Second Indochina War, known as the Vietnam War to Americans, forever changed American's faith in their government. The fall of the city of Hue in 1968 would surprise many Americans, who were led to believe the U.S. was winning the war. It marks the end of American's age of innocence.
In an epic three-day battle, Robert E. Lee gambled everything to save the South from total destruction only to be turned back in a savage battle of attrition near the town of Gettysburg Pennsylvania. The battle would lead Union troops on a march to the bloody gates of Richmond.
From D-Day until the end of the war in Europe, J.D. Salinger would be on the front lines battling the best troops Hitler could put in the field. Few realize that the well-known author of "The Catcher in the Rye" was a veteran of a secret combat intelligence group known as the "Richie Boys."
On September 1,1939, Adolf Hitler unleashed his legions upon Poland using this small country as a testing ground for the Blitzkrieg, a new type of warfare. Hitler's armies changed the face of warfare. Setting in motion the bloodiest conflict in human history costing 60 million lives.
In 1942 Adolf Hitler sent one of his best generals to Libya to rescue Italian troops from Britain's desert army. Erwin Rommel would lead the German counterattack putting Britain's troops on their heels and even threating the Suez Canal, Britian's lifeline to the far east.
Hitler's last great gamble in the Ardennes in December 1944 is the largest and most deadly land battle in American military history. Novelist J.D. Salinger's division is shattered during the battle leaving him hospitalized as the war ended. Over 1600 Americans a day would die during the battle.
After over five years of war and more than 55 million deaths, the most feared empire in modern history met its end in Berlin. At its center was the paranoid, drug-transformed emperor, Adolf Hitler, who waited in his underground bunker for Red Army troops to knock on his door.
De Soto's expedition in North America was an epic struggle that would end in disaster as his search for the lost city of El Dorado (the city of gold) proved to be a false dream. As he plunged deeper into the untamed wilderness of North America, death circled his doomed expedition.
Tecumseh's death in 1813, which marked the end of his pan-Indian confederacy, is one of the most significant moments in American history.
The Second World War had been dragging on for five bloody years in the fall of 1944. The British capital of London would become the target for a new revolutionary weapon which would set the stage for all future wars. Hitler wanted the Allies to pay for their bombing campaign against his Fatherland.
Erich Hartmann would score more victories in the Second World War than any fighter pilot in the history of aerial warfare, downing 352 Soviet planes as he prowled the skies over the Eastern Front.
The air raids by the American and British Air Forces in the Second World War were the most destructive in human history leaving vast wastelands wherever their massive aerial armadas would strike.
After the Battle for Pea Ridge Union, army commander General Curtis would march his army through Arkansas, leaving devastation in its wake, as the Confederates attempted to regroup to fight another day.
The Battle for Wilson's Creek took the national focus away from the battlefield at Bull Run which took place a month earlier and give the Confederacy another major victory over Union forces. As the American Civil War began it looked as if the Confederacy held the upper hand on the battlefield.
In the summer of 1940 Hitler would unleash his blitzkrieg on Western Europe it would roll over a vast Allied Army leaving the citizens of Western Europe under Nazi rule for the next five years.
Okinawa was the bloodiest battle in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War. It was where the commanding generals on both sides would die in battle. The Japanese army fought to the last man in the caves surrounding Shuri Castle, creating a killing zone like no other in the Pacific War.
The Battle of Verdun during WWI was a macabre portrait of the horrors of trench warfare. Millions of German and French shells were fired, creating a lunar landscape on the battlefield.
H.G. Wells predicted early in the Twentieth century that airpower would become both the product and the downfall of Western Civilization. In the Second World War the bomber would bring about the greatest catastrophe in history bringing terror and death to millions of civilians, women and children.
Lockheed Skunk Works has created some of the most revolutionary airplane designs in aviation history. Many of its planes are still cloaked in mystery. Skunk Works newest planes are most likely beyond your wildest expectations, flying faster and higher than any in history sparking many UFO sightings.
Grigori Rasputin's story will permanently be a part of the Russian Cultural landscape. His life forever changed the course of Russia's history. It opened the door to political transformation and the rise of the Soviet Union. which would fall victim to the Cold War in 1991.
Only surpassed by the Chernobyl reactor meltdown in the Ukraine and the Fukushima reactor meltdown in Japan the accident at Church Rock New Mexico still remains hidden to the world. The aftereffects continue to affect the residents of Church Rock today.
The crisis at Three Mile Island began in the early morning of March 28, 1979, what happened in the next five days changed the course of nuclear power production in the United States.
The fight for Isarel has raged on and off since 1948. The journey began when a generation of European Jews fled the horrors of the holocaust after WWII. This great migration of unfortunate souls became involved in a protracted battle for their promised homeland which still lasts to this day.
The Battle at Pea Ridge was a major turning point west of the Mississippi River during the American Civil War. The Confederate defeat left Arkansas open to troops and guerrillas from both sides who roamed the state forcing its citizens to endure a state of Total War until the war.
One of the most ill conceived missions of the Second World War was Patton's raid on the prisoner of war camp at Hammelburg. The POW camp was located deep in German held territory just weeks before the end of the war.
The Battle of Kasserine Pass took place in Tunisia in February of 1943. It was the United States' first major battlefield defeat of the Second World War.
America has the possibility of experiencing a Fukushima type meltdown at any time, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be warning American citizens about the threat. The United States has twenty-three nuclear power plants with the same design as the Fukushima plant.
Guadalcanal was the beginning of an island-hopping campaign that led Allied troops to the very gates of Japan it was a turning point in the Pacific War, forcing the Japanese military to go on the defensive.
Henry Lee III was a great American Revolutionary War hero and the father of Civil War general Robert E. Lee. He served as the ninth governor of Virginia only to later on being imprisoned twice for debt. His bad business investments forced him to leave the United States only to return near his death.
Hans Rudel was Germany's most highly decorated combat pilot of the Second World War. Known as the "Stuka Pilot" Rudel was shot down 29 times and survived to see the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.
In the spring of 1942 Adolf Hitler would launch an all-out attack toward the city of Stalingrad, it raged for 199 days becoming the deadliest battle in history. The battle for Stalingrad would become the major turning point of the Second World War.
T.E. Lawrence's adventures during WWI have gone down in history as one of the most daring military operations in history. At one time Lawrence lived the life of a mild-mannered archaeologist. But when war broke, he transformed into a revolutionary whose role in the Arab Revolt became legendary.
The world would become exposed to terrorism at the Munich Olympics massacre of 1972. The Palestinian terror group "Black September" would bring their struggle to the world's attention via the airwaves. Osama bin Laden would expose the world to a new form of asymmetric violence.
On Sept. 1st, 1859, the most powerful solar storm in recorded history engulfed our planet. It was “the Carrington Event,” named after British scientist Richard Carrington, who witnessed the flare that started it. The storm rocked Earth’s magnetic field what if it happened today?