James Edward Hanger (Library of Congress) The first amputation of the Civil War came at the hands of a 16th Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regimental Surgeon who removed the leg of an 18-year-old college student from the Shenandoah Valley named James E. Hanger. The operation was conducted in a private home
by Dana DelBianco (US Air Force) The Convair B-36 was a remarkable aircraft. But anyone with an even vague idea of what an airplane looks like will see those old photos and ask, “Why are the propellers on backwards?” The short answer: they aren’t. (National Archives) To
Todd DePastino “Contrabands,” escaped slaves enlisted in the Union Army, 1861-1865(courtesy Library of Congress) The Civil War ended slavery. But it didn’t do so everywhere, all at once, on one date. Emancipation came in fits and starts over five full years between 1861-1865. “Juneteenth”—the day in 1865 when enslaved
(American Legion) (American Legion) I somehow missed this an old news item about the discovery of a Vietnam War memorial outside of Philadelphia in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. In 2012, someone was clearing brush at an old bank parking lot and discovered a distinctive Vietnam War monument. No one
It was originally called Decoration Day, and it was always May 30. Until 1971, what we call Memorial Day fell invariably on May 30, a date chosen in 1868 by General John Logan, commander of the Grand Army of the Republic (our nation’s first veterans organization). In his famous General Order No.
(Daguerrotype of Samuel Morse, 1840. Perhaps taken by Louis Daguerre himself) He was a master portrait artist, a virulent hater of Catholics, and a supporter of slavery. He did NOT invent the telegraph. Nor did he single-handedly create the dot-dash text encoding method that bears his name. Samuel Morse, however,
