Posts Tagged ‘WWII’
History of Bastille Day: Its Relation to the French Revolution
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF BASTILLE DAY ach year on July 14, Bastille Day commemorates the Storming of the Bastille in Paris in 1789, an important date in the French Revolution. Also known as French National Day, it features feasting, fireworks, public dancing, and an address by the French President. However, the center of this celebration is the…
Read MoreHistory of the World Cup
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF THE WORLD CUP he World Cup 2026 Tournament takes place across North America, hosted by sixteen cities – eleven in the United States, three in Mexico, and two in Canada. 42 countries, up from the previous 32, will participate in the first games hosted across three countries. The total number of matches played…
Read MoreHistory of D-Day: 82 Years Ago
Reading Time: 6 minutesHISTORY OF D-DAY Podcast version Why has D-Day captured the imagination of American consciousness for over three-quarters of a century? Eighty-two years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allies launched an offensive on the Normandy coast of France to liberate continental Europe from the Nazi German occupation. On Twitter/X, the hashtag is #DDay82…
Read MoreHistory of Memorial Day: Why We Fight
Reading Time: 3 minutesHISTORY OF MEMORIAL DAY: WHY WE FIGHT As we celebrate Memorial Day, the world is different from what it was two and a half decades ago. We have troops in countries that we didn’t have then, and after 9/11, we now remember why we fight. The History Channel often reruns the HBO series Band of…
Read MoreHistory of Memorial Day: Which War?
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF MEMORIAL DAY: WHICH WAR? Memorial Day was not universally recognized as a shared American Holiday until after World War I. But that’s not how it started in the United States. When did it begin? Civil War and Memorial Day Following the American Civil War, or the “War Between the States,” as it…
Read MoreHistory of VE-Day: End of WWII in Europe 81 Years Ago
Reading Time: 2 minutesHISTORY OF VE-DAY ighty-one years ago today, World War II ended in Europe with the Allies accepting the unconditional surrender from Germany on VE-Day. Or did it? May 7, 1945, VE-Day Adolf Hitler had committed suicide in his Berlin bunker a week earlier on April 30, 1945, as I describe in my article on…
Read MoreHistory of the Liberation of Dachau, Part 2: April 30, 1945
Reading Time: 3 minutesHISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF DACHAU: APRIL 30, 1945. Part 2 n Part 1, I discussed the Nazi Concentration Camps and the initial movement of US Army divisions into Dachau. Dachau: The Camp As my father and the 42nd “Rainbow” Division moved into the Dachau Concentration Camp, of the 32,000 survivors still alive in…
Read MoreHistory of the Liberation of Dachau, Part 1: April 29, 1945
Reading Time: 5 minutesHISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF DACHAU, PART 1: APRIL 29, 1945 remember what my father had told me of his participation in the liberation of Dachau shortly before he died in 1976. Some of his war buddies discovered the tribute site I’d created for my father and called or emailed me to recount stories I’d…
Read MoreHistory of Peter Pan: the Story Behind the Disney Classic
Reading Time: 6 minutesHISTORY OF PETER PAN Podcast version All of this has happened before, And it will all happen again. o begins my favorite Walt Disney animated movie, Peter Pan, which debuted on February 5, 1953. The original movie poster said: “It will live in your heart forever” …and indeed it has. Why was…
Read MoreHistory of the Liberation of Auschwitz: January 27, 1945
Reading Time: 7 minutesHISTORY OF THE LIBERATION OF AUSCHWITZ: JANUARY 27, 1945 anuary 27, 1945, was the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, one of the most notorious camps of World War II, by the Soviet Red Army. This date is now known by the United Nations and the European Union as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In America,…
Read MoreHistory of New Year’s Eve
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF NEW YEAR’S EVE Podcast version ew Year’s Eve, according to the Gregorian Calendar, is the last day of the year, known as Old Year’s Day or St. Sylvester’s Day. You may remember reading that Emperor Constantine was considered the first “Christian” Roman Emperor. St. Sylvester, the Bishop of Rome, baptized Constantine in…
Read MoreHistory of the First American Christmas: 1776
Reading Time: 4 minutesHISTORY OF THE FIRST AMERICAN CHRISTMAS: 1776 Part of the series on America 250, the US Semiquincentennial Podcast version t is called the first “American” Christmas because the Declaration of Independence was created the previous summer, essentially “divorcing” America from England and declaring our country an independent nation. Perhaps it would be more accurate…
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