written by Mary Klepper In December, I made a pilgrimage to Kanchanaburi, Thailand, a site made famous by the 1957 David Lean classic, The Bridge On the River Kwai, starring William Holden and Alec Guinness. The film is far from an accurate depiction of the horrors that accompanied the Japanese construction of the Burma
In conjunction with the release of the highly-anticipated Apple TV+ series, Masters of the Air, VBC historian host Glenn Flickinger has created a 10-part livestream series beginning Thursday, January 18 at 7:00pm that will preview, recap, and provide history discussion around each episode. Each week, Glenn will cover the action and background of the
written by Carole Wagener A veteran’s letters are a rich source that can be mined for gold when writing their stories. Using these first-person accounts, the events of the time when they were written should be reasonably historically accurate. Many veterans wrote letters home to their sweethearts or their parents who saved them. Some
written by Bob Miller 99-year-old Bob Miller came on VBC Happy Hour back in April and shared his story about joining the Navy before Pearl Harbor and spending the next six years serving on 11 different ships. From the Jr. Naval Reserve, which he joined at age 13, Bob then entered the real Navy
written by Frank Santucci Frank Santucci is an Army veteran who has been attending VBC events and sharing stories for many years, along with his brother, Ralph Santucci. Frank is a one-person repository of stories especially about his beloved hometown of Verona, PA. Tiny Verona sits 13 miles up the Allegheny River from downtown
written by Todd DePastino The September 18 History Museum in Shenyang (陳炬燵, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons) On September 18, 1931, the first seeds of catastrophe were sewn when a five-foot section of rail in the city of Mukden, China, sustained minor damage from small explosion. The so-called “Mukden Incident” was
