Fashion Flashback: Given that fashion was instrumental in the creation of Canada, this blog series explores the development of what Canadians wore one era at a time. The Seven Years War (1754-1763)…

Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein

Background On October 1808 Sir John Moore took command of the Anglo-Portuguese army. He boldly led his 23,000 men into Spain, but a month later had to retreat rapidly, pursued by the enemy. His strategic position was not good, his Spanish allies had been defeated and had proved to be untrustworthy, and he faced a...

Part 3 of a weekly 20-part retrospective of World War II

They’re meant to be war heroes, yet thousands of Australian diggers are sleeping on the streets. The federal government and the states can’t agree who is responsible for funding housing, and support groups for veterans are warning a crisis is brewing. Cathy Van Extel investigates.

Following the Tokyo Raid, the crews of two planes remained unaccounted for. On Aug. 15, 1942, it was learned from the Swiss consulate general in Shanghai that the Japanese had eight American flyers at

Unique among the territories of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, Britain succeeded in holding back and even reversing the tide of Germanic conquest for nearly two centuries. This was an…

Napoléon Bonaparte was an excellent military strategist. He was crowned Emperor of the French in 1804, forging his status as Europe’s most powerful man at

Fashion Flashback: Given that fashion was instrumental in the creation of Canada, this blog series explores the development of what Canadians wore one era at a time. The Seven Years War (1754-1763)…

The Bletchley Park Wrens, who broke German codes during WWII, have finally begun to speak on their experiences.

KEITH'S WARGAMING BLOG. This blog has been created to share my exploits in the hobby of wargaming. I game in the WW2, Seven Years War, Napoleonic and Ancient periods. The blog also contains a few details of my book 'Airborne Armour'. Please don't quit the site without leaving a comment, even if not related to a specific post. Most wargamers have something interesting to say about the hobby!

The Canadian War Museum is Canada's national museum of military history. Located in Ottawa, Ontario, the museum covers all facets of Canada's military past, from the first recorded instances of death by armed violence in Canadian history several hundred years ago to the country's most recent involvement in conflicts. It includes major permanent exhibitions on wars that have been fought on Canadian soil, the total wars of the twentieth century, the Cold War and peace support operations abroad, and Canada's history of honouring and remembrance. There is also an open storage area displaying large objects from the Museum's collection, from naval guns to tanks, from motorcycles to jet aircraft. The exhibits depict Canada's military past in its personal, national and international dimensions, with special emphasis on the human experience of war and the manner in which war has affected, and been affected by, Canadians' participation.

Authorities are now investigating the files of 24 suspected war criminals, including three women.

It doesn't matter if you believe in the paranormal and ghosts or not. There are places that are just plain creepy. Here we explore 10 locations reported to be haunted. There is some spooky stuff here

Part of what makes this project so cool is how quickly it was completed, well before we expected. That's all due to the sharp instinct of our favorite

The nameless Marine stares blankly into the distance, his vacant eyes peeled inhumanly wide. According to the artist, he’s a combat veteran of both the enemy and tropical disease.

A Window into the Mysterious World of the 17th Century One of the most over-looked time periods in European and budding American history is the Cavalier and Puritan era– the 17th Century̵…

A French girl engaged to a Nazi soldier follows him into prison after his capture near Orleans by U.S. forces in August 1944.

14th Connecticut Private Oliver Dart was grievously wounded at Fredericksburg on Dec. 13, 1862. (Image courtesy Alan Crane) A tattered CDV of Oliver Dart was found among papers in his pension file at the National Archives. Like this blog on Facebook | Follow me on Twitter Within a year of his regiment's ill-fated charge at Fredericksburg, Oliver Dart Jr. faced another great trial: a sitting for a photograph at a studio on Main Street in Hartford, Conn. The resulting carte-de-visite, found in the 14th Connecticut veteran's pension file in the National Archives, is difficult to view. Bundled in a heavy coat, the blue-eyed veteran with black hair and thick eyebrows stared at the Kellogg Brothers' photographer. A mangled lower jaw, mouth and nose — the awful effects of a shrapnel wound suffered during the attack on Marye's Heights — were obvious. We wonder how Dart summoned the fortitude to sit for the CDV, undoubtedly evidence for his pension claim. The CDV of Dart was taken by the Kellogg Brothers in Hartford. As he waited for his turn to be photographed that day, Dart's mind may have drifted to Dec. 13, 1862, and the Battle of Fredericksburg. Marching onto the battlefield via Princess Anne Street, the 14th Connecticut came under "a most galling fire" after crossing a causeway over a canal near the railroad depot. Then an artillery shell fired from high ground on the 14th Connecticut's right burst among prone soldiers in Company D. A 3 x 2-inch fragment smashed into the ground, firing sand into the eyes of Dart's brother-in-law, 14th Connecticut Corporal John Symonds, blinding him. A chunk of metal crashed into the arm and face of the 23-year-old Dart before striking a four-inch square, wooden post. Corporal Charles Lyman, lying next to Dart, recalled years later that the fragment surely would have ripped through his head and killed him had it not struck that obstacle. (In the charge on the well-defended stone wall at the foot of Marye's Heights, Oliver's cousin Charles, the 14th Connecticut's regimental color bearer, suffered a mortal wound.) Dart's wounds horrified another soldier in the regiment. "Poor Oliver Dart," he said. "As he rolled over he looked as though his whole face was shot away." In this enlargement of a war-time photo of Fredericksburg, Va., the Rowe House is shown. 14th Connecticut wounded, including Oliver Dart, were among Union soldiers cared for at the divisional hospital there. (Library of Congress). A circa-1940s image of the Rowe House at 607 Sophia Street in Fredericksburg. The house no longer stands. (Library of Congress) Frank Niederwerfer, descendant of Oliver Dart, holds an image of the 14th Connecticiut private at the site of the old Rowe house in Fredericksburg, Va. Dart was cared for at the divisional hospital there. May 1865 image of Stanton General Hospital in Washington, where Dart recovered from his wounds. (Library of Congress) Comrades carried Dart to a divisional hospital at the Rowe House on Sophia Street. The scene there stunned the 14th Connecticut regimental chaplain. "On the northern porch lay, among others, our Dart, his face torn off as though slashed away with a cleaver," Henry Stevens recalled, "and by his side lay Symonds, his eyes swollen with inflammation to the size of eggs, the sand grains showing through the tightly stretched and shining lids." On the day after Christmas, Dart was admitted to Stanton General Hospital in Washington, one of dozens of military hospitals in the capital. A doctor considered his chances of recovery slim — "wounded in battle," one wrote, "probably mortally." When his older brother George, a farmer, visited Oliver at the hospital, he found the conditions deplorable. A circa-1866 image of Oliver Dart with a bushy beard and mustache. (Image courtesy of Dart descendant Frank Niederwerfer) After five weeks in the Washington hospital, Dart was mercifully discharged from the U.S. Army and sent home to South Windsor, Conn. Miraculously recovering, he underwent an operation on his face at the home of his older brother, James. Oliver — the youngest of the six children of Amanda and Oliver Dart Sr. — underwent a second procedure on his face at the home of his father in South Windsor. "George Dart and his wife were almost constantly with their injured brother," a post-war account noted, "and gave him every care and attention." For three months in the summer of 1863, Oliver also spent time at a soldier's home in Hartford, where he received sustenance from a special cup because of his terrible face wound. In June 1863, Oliver filed for divorce from his second wife, Maria, claiming "a total neglect of all duties of marriage" Nearly three years later, the divorce was granted. Maria was the sister of John Symonds, the soldier who had suffered a wound next to Oliver at Fredericksburg. In December 1863, Dart filed for a government pension; the application was approved, and he initially received $8 a month. In 1869, Oliver married his third wife, Aurelia Barber, with whom he had his only three children. In an attempt to cover up his grievous war wounds, he grew a bushy beard and mustache. "In time he recovered," the post-war account noted, "though the wound was always visible and in later years his mind was somewhat affected, undoubtedly due to the shock and the suffering that ensued from the injury." Life remained an almost constant struggle for the Civil War veteran, and in the summer of 1879, consumption struck down Dart. Only 40 years old, he died on Aug. 11. He was buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Vernon, Conn., next to first wife Emily, who died in 1860, and Aurelia. Have something to add (or correct) in this post? E-mail me here. SOURCES: Dart family history Oliver Dart pension file, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. Page, Charles Davis, History of the Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteer Infantry, Meriden, Conn.: The Horton Printing Co., 1906. Stevens, H.S. Souvenir of Excursion to Battlefields by the Society of the Fourteenth Connecticut Regiment and Reunion at Antietam, September 1891, With History and Reminiscences of Battles and Campaigns of the Regiment on the Fields Revisited, Washington, D.C.: Gibson Brothers Printers, 1893. The Boys from Rockville, Civil War Narratives of Sgt. Benjamin Hirst, Co. D, 14th Connecticut Volunteers, edited, with commentary, by Robert L, Bee, The University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, Tenn., 1998.

FROM Anzacs who fought with bayonets at Gallipoli to high-tech warriors in Afghanistan - our troops have come a long way since 1915.

The minister of armaments was happy to tell his captors about the war machine he had built. But it was a different story when he was asked about the Holocaust

Images of War: Allied POWs in German Hands 1914-1918, Rare Photographs From Wartime Archives by David Bilton uses images taken by the German authorities in the First World War.

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History books often overlook many historical moments. Some of them are forgetful, some are boring, some are great, but we have lost most of them to history. There are many more great moments that history has preserved that we aren’t going to cover in this articles, but I bet there are million more stories that […]

Salty Sam’s Fun Blog for Children Number 82 Decorating Wellington Boots Hello Everyone Did you go back to school this week? Did you start going to school for the first time this week? When my nephews Bill and Bob go to school and it going to be a rainy day, they wear their wellingtons so that they can splash through the puddles without getting their feet wet. Do ...

Russia is building underground nuclear command bunkers in the latest sign Moscow is moving ahead with a major strategic forces modernization program.