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

Fire at the Reichstag

Fire at the Reichstag

In January of 1933, Germany elected Adolf Hitler as Chancellor, and as one of his first acts he called for a second election to determine seats in the Reichstag, or German Parliament. Hitler intended to fill the Reichstag with other Nazi party officials, allowing them to replace the Weimar Republic, the German system of Parliamentary democracy instituted after World War I, with their own government in order to control Germany's future. The Communist party's objections to this bold plan posed a political threat to the Nazi party.

The Last Viking

The Last Viking

On September 25, 1066, at the site of a bridge over the River Derwent in what is now the East Riding of Yorkshire, thousands of Anglo-Saxon warriors led by King Harold Godwinson closed in from the west on a force of Norsemen led by their king, Harald Hardrada.  The arrival of the Anglo-Saxon forces took the Vikings by complete surprise.  The unarmored and disjointed Vikings frantically organized on the east side of the river, but the Norse king needed more time to arrange their defenses.  On the narrow wooden bridge, one lone warrior, his name unrecorded in history, raised his axe and stood defiant against 15,000 English warriors, intent on granting his king and people the time they desperately needed.

The Hollister Gypsy Tour

The Hollister Gypsy Tour

During World War II, Harley-Davidson produced nearly 100,000 motorcycles for the military motor pools of the United States and other Allied forces. Riding a post-war wave of popularity and prosperity, Harley advertised its powerful, V-twin models with images of smiling, clean-cut couples touring the American countryside. This image did not last. 

The Leopard of Rudraprayag

The Leopard of Rudraprayag

For eight years in the early 20th century, a particularly powerful and elusive man-eating leopard haunted the northern Indian village of Rudraprayag at the base of the Himalayas. It developed a taste for humans after eating corpses during the 1918 flu outbreak, in which sheer volume prevented the tradition of cremation from disposing of every dead body; once the disease subsided and the animal could no longer find dead bodies, it took to live humans instead. The leopard found the area around Rudraprayag, with a population of roughly 50,000 people and its position on a major pilgrimage route through the mountains.  In a period of almost eight years from its first attack on June 9, 1918 until its last on April 14, 1926, it officially killed roughly 125 people, though the actual number was probably much higher.  News of the attacks and the ensuing panic spread as far as London.

The Valley of Death

The Valley of Death

Just north of Turkey lies the Black Sea, a roughly peanut-shaped saltwater lake the size about the size of Arizona and New Mexico combined. The Crimean Peninsula juts out into the Black Sea from the north, on which sits the port city of Sevastapol. In 1853, the weakening Ottoman Empire controlled the area known as the Crimea, but Russia, sensing weakness, sent troops into the region in July of that year. Britain and France, hoping to deny the growing Russian Empire the valuable port city, sent warships and troops to aid the Ottomans, signalling the beginning of the Crimean War.

The Cannoneer's Wife

The Cannoneer's Wife

During the American Revolution, a barber from Carlisle, Pennsylvania named John Hays joined the Patriot forces, becoming an artilleryman in Captain Francis Proctor's company of the Pennsylvania Artillery. His wife, Mary Ludwig Hays, accompanied him on the campaign with George Washington's Revolutionary Army, as did many military wives of the day. Mary, a 22-year-old daughter of German immigrants, soon became known as an illiterate, hard-drinking, tobacco-chewing woman who could curse with the best of the soldiers, and was popularly called Molly by the men. During the winter of 1777-1778, she stayed in the women's camp with Washington's army in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania after British forces had captured Philadelphia earlier that year.

Up the Garderobe

Up the Garderobe

Before he attacked and seized the crown of England in 1066, William the Conqueror held the title of Duke of Normandy, a region of northern France. Throughout the rest of his reign, and of the six English kings that followed, Normandy, while technically still owing its allegiance to France, operated under English control. More than a century later, King Richard I, known as the 'Lion-Heart', built a series of castles, including the imposing Château Gaillard, in order to retain his control of Normandy. 

Mr. Rogers Goes to Washington

Mr. Rogers Goes to Washington

In 1969, a cost-cutting measure by the US Congress threatened to slash the funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Congress called for hearings on the matter and the issue rested on the testimony by children's television host Fred Rogers. Mr. Rogers discarded the idea of simply reading the printed material and instead spent about six minutes speaking openly and honestly about the benefits of educational children's television to the US Senate Subcommittee on Communications headed by Sen. John Pastore (D-R.I.), who was, until that point, unfamiliar with Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. 

Do It Yourself

Do It Yourself

In January of 1961, the Russian research base called Novolazarevskaya Station opened deep in the isolated regions of the frozen Antarctic ice cap. By the end of April, one of the 13 crewmen displayed unmistakable signs of appendicitis, so the base doctor, Leonid Rogozov, decided that he would have to conduct an emergency appendectomy on the patient, despite the poor conditions under which the surgery would be held. The main problem with this plan was besides being the only qualified medic on the base, the doctor was also the patient.