The 1950s
James Husband
Lituya Bay, 1958

The rumbling shook the sleeping boy’s father from his fading half-sleep on the berth of their single-masted sailing boat.  Bolting up and looking out the window, his eyes widened as he saw the still waters of the Alaskan inlet churn and rise into a monstrous, debris-strewn wave, easily fifty feet in height and heading straight toward their tiny craft.  The father tossed a life preserver at the groggy boy and said, “Son, start praying.”

Lituya Bay, 1958
The 1930s
James Husband
The Emu War

After the 1918 armistice ended the fighting of World War I, the Australian government instituted a program to buy and provide farming land for its returning soldiers, in order to reintroduce them back into civilian life.  In Western Australia, the government established 48 farming estates totaling almost 90,000 hectares, a little over 200,000 acres, in an area northeast of Perth, in the southwestern corner of the nation. Years later, the Great Depression of 1929 hit the area particularly hard, and when the land was invaded by a relentless and destructive pest, the Minister of Defense in Perth dispatched a machine gun crew, with less than stellar results.

The Emu War
The 19th Century
James Husband
Jakob Walter’s March Home

By 1812, Jakob Walter, although only 24 years of age, had already served in two campaigns as a foot soldier for the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.  Jakob and many other conscripts in the Grande Armée were ordered to undertake the famously ill-fated march on Moscow, after which the devastated remnants of Napoleon's fighting force were left to return to their homes on their own power.  Jakob's meticulous diary tells a tale of survival and perseverance during this nightmarish march against staggering odds.

Jakob Walter’s March Home
The 19th Century
James Husband
The Secret Surveyor of Tibet

By the early 1860s, the British and Russian Empires simultaneously attempted to spread their influence into Tibet, a region which was at the time still tenuously under the control of the fading Qing Empire in China.  Tibetan leadership, in an attempt to forestall culture erosion and retain its connections with the Chinese, closed its borders to Europeans of all sorts on penalty of death.  Captain Thomas G. Montgomerie of the Royal Engineers, tasked with the exploration and mapping of Tibet, developed a plan to use trained natives to surreptitiously take the measurements for which British agents, regardless of their talent or preparation, would be much more vulnerable to discovery.  After being asked for recommendations of loyal and talented locals who could be taught techniques in infiltration and surveying, British Education Officer Edmund Smyth suggested to Montgomerie a 33-year-old local schoolteacher named Nain Singh.

The Secret Surveyor of Tibet
The 19th Century
James Husband
Run For Your Life, John Colter

 

Aware that they were essentially invading and poaching on enemy land, Corps of Discovery veterans John Colter and John Potts remained hidden during the day in order to escape detection, setting their traps at night and gathering up their proceeds as the following dawn broke.  One morning, as the two men canoes up the Jefferson River, they heard a commotion above the elevated riverbank to the east.  Colter claimed that the noise was caused by Indians, but Potts insisted it was just buffalo, so they persisted up the river, whereupon they came face-to-face with a party of approximately 800 Blackfoot.

Run For Your Life, John Colter

The Challenge

The Challenge

In southern Belgium in 57 BC, the expansionist Romans under Julius Caesar fought against a confederation of several tribes of Belgian Gauls in the Battle of the Sabis. The Romans dealt a severe punishment to one Gallic tribe called the Nervii, forcing them to retreat. Three years later, the regenerated Nervii mounted an attack of their own against the 11th Claudian Legion of the Roman army led by Quintus Cicero, who had camped for the winter. The Nervii, using tactics they had learned from the Romans themselves, built a ten-mile circular wall and ditch around the Roman palisade, trapping the 11th within their own fortification. Before long, the Nervii assaulted the Roman position with towers, grappling hooks, and manpower, and the siege was on.

The Father of Scouting

The Father of Scouting

Frederick Burnham was born in 1861 on an Indian reservation in what is now Minnesota, the son of a Kentucky-born missionary and outdoorsman and his English wife, and a true product of the American west.. When Indians attacked their village during the Dakota War of 1862, Fred’s mother, knowing she couldn’t move quickly enough while carrying him, hid Fred in a corn shock while she fled to another homestead; Fred spent the night there under the stacked corn even as the Indians ran by, and upon his mother's return the following day, she found him unharmed and sleeping. Over the years, he inherited his father’s love and skill for outdoorsmanship, and became proficient in the use of a rifle by the time he was eight. Around 1870, Fred’s father slipped on some ice while carrying an armload of wood; the falling wood left him with serious injuries and a case of consumption from which he could not recover; the family moved to California, where Fred’s father died in 1873. The following year, Fred's mother decided to return the family to Iowa, but Fred, then 13 years old, considered himself responsible for the family, so he decided to stay in California, where he would call upon his frontiersman skills to earn money for their support.  

Sulfur Island

Sulfur Island

In February of 1945, US Marines attacked the rocky Japanese island of Iwo Jima, whose name literally means 'Sulfur Island'. American military strategists planned the invasion as the first assault on one of Japan’s “Home Islands” in World War II, and its success would deny the Empire the use of the island for early warning purposes and as an emergency landing strip for its damaged aircraft, while providing the United States with the same advantages. On February 9, US Navy battleships and B-24 heavy bombers from the 7th Air Force began an intense bombardment of the Japanese troops garrisoned in the island's fortified bunkers which lasted for ten days. 

Henry Fielding's Journey

Henry Fielding's Journey

Henry Fielding was born in Somerset, England, 1707 to an aristocratic family which soon found itself out of money and out of luck. His mother died when he was ten, and his father, a General in King George's Army, died penniless not long after. At the age of 12, his maternal grandmother sent him to Eton for schooling, where he learned the art of writing, with an eye toward the satirical. In the summer of 1725, he and James Lewis, his servant, were involved in a brawl over Sara Andrews, a 15-year-old heiress with whom Henry was infatuated. Two months later, he convinced James to help him abduct Sara on her way to church along with another man named Andrew Tucker; they failed, and while the constables captured James not long after, Henry drew up some leaflets ridiculing Andrew and his family, posted them up about town, and then ran away.

The Shattered Lance

The Shattered Lance

On a clear spring day in June of 1559, two massive horses thundered toward each other as their armored riders lowered their lances. The crowd cheered as the competitors clashed and pieces of broken lance flew into the air, signifying a score for one of the lancers. The jouster dressed in black and white tottered, then steadied himself in the saddle. As attendants rushed out to assist the wounded man, cheers turned to gasps as pieces of his opponent's shattered lance could be seen projecting from his visor. Blood spilled from the helmet; the tilt had taken a deadly turn.

We Hold the Rock

We Hold the Rock

By 1969, in the midst of the American Civil Rights movement, two separate groups of American Indians from the San Francisco bay area contemplated the idea of seizing the rocky island of Alcatraz. The prison which made the island famous had shut down more than six years earlier, and local officials debated what to do with the iconic island. When the San Francisco American Indian Center in San Francisco burned down in October of that year, the Indian activists galvanized and, citing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, they formed the multi-tribal group Indians of All Nations, and developed plans to occupy The Rock.

Floating Bombs

Floating Bombs

"Look what I found, dear!"  On May 5, 1945, Elsie Mitchell shouted these words back to her husband Archie, as he returned from parking the car for their church picnic outing in Bly, Oregon.  Elsie, a pregnant 26-year-old Sunday school teacher, and five teenaged students approached the oddity they had found, half buried in a late-season snowbank. Someone shouted that it was a balloon, and one or more of the children tried to drag it back to a more open area.  Archie Mitchell, a local pastor, had heard of explosive-laden balloons spotted near the west coast. He yelled back for them not to touch it, but it was too late, and the balloon contraption exploded, sending flames into the air and shaking the ground.

Riding Out the Storm

Riding Out the Storm

On July 1, 1776, the Second Continental Congress fell one vote short of a unanimous decision to declare their independence. The motion to split from Great Britain was contingent on winning the vote of the tiny, coastal state Delaware to the south; if it voted in the affirmative, then the Congress would be able to formally adopt the Declaration of Independence and assert itself as an independent nation. Independence was tantamount to treason in the eyes of the British, so any delegate backing the motion placed himself at considerable risk.

Rome's Darkest Hour

Rome's Darkest Hour

On May 6, 1527, Pope Clement VII ran for his life. Spirited through a secret passage in the wall of St. Peter’s Basilica, he fled for 800 meters down the Passetto di Borgo, a narrow, arched corridor that runs within the Vatican City’s exterior wall. Behind him, an invading army committed the harshest atrocities upon the Eternal City in its existence.

Lincoln's Last Night

Lincoln's Last Night

John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of President Lincoln was actually one of three elements in the planned attack on April 14, 1865.  Booth had learned that Lincoln was to attend the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater, and, being a well-known youngest member of a famous acting family, was very familiar with the interior of the building.  He scouted out Ford's Theater hours before Lincoln's arrival, and planned his attack meticulously.  Booth carved a peephole in the door to the Presidential Box and rigged up a way to jam it shut once he was inside.