US History

  • The St. Valentine’s Day massacre—the most spectacular gangland slaying in mob history—was actually somewhat of a failure. Al Capone had arranged for Chicago mobster George “Bugs” Moran and most of his North Side Gang to be eliminated on February 14, 1929. The plan, probably devised by Capone’s henchman “Machine Gun” Jack McGurn, was simple and…

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  • Mart Duggan (November 10, 1848 – April 9, 1888) was a legendary gunfighter of the American Old West. Though largely forgotten today, he was once one of the most feared lawmen of his time. Author Robert K. DeArment, in his book Deadly Dozen, ranks Duggan as one of the most underrated gunmen of the Old…

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  • On 21 January 1968, an aircraft accident (sometimes known as the Thule affair or Thule accident  involving a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 bomber occurred near Thule Air Base in the Danish territory of Greenland. The aircraft was carrying four hydrogen bombs on a Cold War “Chrome Dome” alert mission over Baffin Bay when a cabin fire forced the crew to abandon the aircraft before they could carry out an emergency landing at Thule…

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  • The American Civil war

    Outside of the US not that much is really known about the American Civil war, we know the basics but not really the in depth history. Often there is a romantic view of the war based on Hollywood depictions of the time, or shows like North and South. The pictures below show the complexity of…

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  • Harry Truman

    I know what you all will be thinking that this will be a blog about President Truman, possibly about the order he gave to drop the atomic bombs. Well, you’d be wrong. It is indeed a blog about some explosive events but nothing WWII related. In fact it isn’t about President Truman either. The subject…

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  • Yerba Buena, California

    The name of the town was taken from the yerba buena (Micromeria douglasii) plant, native to the pueblo site. Franciscan missionary Pedro Font, accompanying the Juan Bautista de Anza expedition of 1775-76, applied the Spanish name to the common native herb he found abundant in the landscape. The plant’s common name, yerba buena, the same in English and Spanish, is an alternate form…

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  • The history of the Trump family has been the subject of considerable public interest, particularly following Donald Trump’s rise to prominence in U.S. politics. One of the most contentious aspects of this family history is the connection between Fred Trump, Donald Trump’s father, and an incident involving the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in 1927. While…

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  • On December 2, 1845, U.S. President James K. Polk addressed Congress, advocating for the aggressive westward expansion of the United States—a philosophy widely known as “Manifest Destiny.” I first encountered the term in the 1970s when I heard it mentioned in Redbone’s song Wounded Knee. For years, however, I misheard the lyrics, thinking they sang…

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  • The First Thanksgiving

    Us Europeans often get confused about this whole Thanksgiving business, because in Europe Thanksgiving is on the 1st Sunday in October. That’s when we say thanks for the harvest. Although the US Thanksgiving has also an element of harvest in it, it is not the same as the European one. In 1621, the Plymouth colonists…

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  • No one in their right mind will argue that Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest states men in US and World History. However his moral values weren’t as pure as many people think they were. But in my view that probably makes him even a greater leader then he has been given credit for.…

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