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March 18 The long and brutal battle for the Dardanelles is one of the most commemorated campaigns of the 20th century. Australia and New Zealand remember the Battle of Gallipoli each year on April 25, the anniversary of the first engagement of ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) in World War I. Turkey, meanwhile, remembers the nine-month campaign each year on March 18—the anniversary of the 1915 naval battle of Canakkale which, had the Allies succeeded, …Read more 
March 1 Marshall Islands flag “In the 12-year period from 1946-1958, when the Marshall Islands was a United Nations Trust Territory administered by the United States, the United States conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen atmospheric bomb tests in islands, with a total yield of 108 megatons, which is 98 times greater than the total yield of all the U.S. tests in Nevada. Put another way, the total yield of the tests in the Marshall Islands was equivalent …Read more 
February 13 Overlooking Dresden When I first visited Dresden in the mid-1990′s, to my eyes it looked like the city had just stepped out of World War II, even though, in retrospect, it must have undergone a great deal of renovation by that time. Dresden miraculously survived the first five years of World War II intact, having dodged the Allied bombings that destroyed much of Berlin, Hamburg, and other German cities. Many Germans felt that the …Read more 
January 7 When Cambodia has a holiday it does not mess around with names. Victory Over the Genocidal Regime Day, or Commemoration of the Fall of the Khmer Rouge, marks the end of the Pol Pot led genocide of 1.7 million Cambodians during the 1970s, out of a population of 7 million. “We will always remember the most horrific events of three years, eight months and 20 days under the regime of Democratic Kampuchea, which carried out the …Read more 
November 11
One of the most famous poems of war was written in May 1915 by a Canadian doctor stationed at Ypres during World War I. When the Canadians arrived on April 17 they were strangers to trench warfare. The Germans were not. The Canadians occupied what would prove to be a particularly tragic stretch of grass of the infamous Flanders field. When the Germans attacked, they used every weapon in their arsenal, including …Read more 
September 2
On this day in 1945, Ho Chi Minh read the Declaration of Independence of the newly-proclaimed Democratic Republic of Vietnam. To sum up the prior 2000 years of Vietnamese history in an internet-friendly morsel: Vietnam was ruled by China for nearly a thousand years, until 938 AD, when a Vietnamese Lord defeated the Chinese at Bach Dang River. The Vietnamese then enjoyed 900 years of autonomy (though not necessarily peace), after which the Europeans …Read more 
August 25, 1944 Is Paris Burning? The above line was supposedly uttered by Adolf Hitler to his chief of staff Alfred Jodl, referring to his order to General Dietrich von Choltitz, military governor of Paris during the German occupation, not to let majestic city of Paris fall back into Allied hands, except as complete rubble.
In August 1944, General Eisenhower originally refused to divert troops to help the liberate Paris on the Allies’ …Read more 
last Monday in May May 30, 2011 May 28, 2012
In the United States the May tradition of honoring the dead of wars past began after the Civil War. In individual towns in the South, women would lay flowers and wreaths atop the graves of their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons. It was called Decoration Day. The song “Kneel Where Our Loves Are Sleeping” was published in 1867 with the dedication “to the ladies of …Read more |
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