Do you know who’s the biggest murderer in the history of the world, in terms of raw numbers? Can you guess?
If you guessed Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ghenghis Khan, or any of their ilk, you’re wrong.
The answer is Thomas Midgley Jr. An unimposing man, a chemist, who created a couple of widely used inventions, then got strangled by one.
Watch for yourself:
The tank is dead, long live the tank!
Well, not quite. The tank, a big, protected, fast vehicle with a big gun, isn’t going away anytime soon, no matter how many missiles, mines and other anti-tank weapons are developed.
Not because it’s indestructible, but because its so damned good at what it does. Take a look at The Chieftan’s analysis:
This from the “strange but true” section – how the richest/most powerful countries have changed over time.
TLDR: The ultimate war memoir, very real, very historical, very visceral. If you’re disturbed by the image of throwing yourself down into maggot-infested corpses to save yourself from enemy artillery, this is not for you.
Eugene B Sledge, fresh recruit with the 5th Marines. That’s the 1st Marine Divisions, 5th Marine Regiment, 3rd Battalion. He’s the Sledgehammer, not because his big, or strong, or dangerous, but because his name is Sledge and they are gung-ho marines. Ergo, Sledgehammer.
Sledghammer’s first-person memoir is one of the best depictions of infantry warfare in WWII. That’s not my opinion, that’s the consensus of the war-journalist, WWII historian crowd. In my opinion, With the Old Breed is the best war memoir ever, period. It’s one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read (the other one being Educated by Tara Westover). It’s one of the most engrossing. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t stop reading. Read More
When I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I had no idea that Conan Doyle wrote anything else.
Well, he did. A lot of anything else, some of which is as good, or better than Sherlock Holmes.
The Brigadier Gerard stores are one of those things. Set in the Napoleonic era, that is already historical by the time Conan Doyle wrote them, they focus on the eponymous French soldier’s exploits, starting with him being a junior captain, and ending with… well you’ll have to read for yourself. Read More
Neil Halloran’s amazing data-driven documentary. 18 minutes long, but it puts the scale of the losses into mind-boggling clarity. Watch it. Fear the implications. Decide to do something about it. Read More