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 American Revolution

George Palmer Ransom, American Patriot

George Palmer Ransom, American Patriot

On January 3, 1762, Samuel and Esther Ransom of Canaan, Connecticut, had a son, and they named him after Samuel's best friend and neighbor, George Palmer. In 1773, the family—both parents and eight children, including 11-year-old George—emigrated as part of a widespread migration of Connecticut settlers to what is now northeastern Pennsylvania, settling near the town of Wilkes-Barre in Wyoming Valley. In September 15, 1776, 14-year-old George enlisted with his father and brother-in-law into the 2nd Westmoreland (Wyoming) Independent Company to fight in the American Revolution. His first position there was to bury the dead.

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.

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.