May 30th, 2013 at 11:00AM: Sean McLachlan from public domain image. Original photographer unknown.
Like every other nation involved in World War I, Italy suffered terribly. It joined the war in 1915, throwing its lot in with the Allies against the Central Powers. Italy's most immediate threat was its neighbor the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The border was mostly in the Alps and soldiers on both sides carved out ice caves from ...Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.
WWI posts
Touring The World War One Battlefield Of Isonzo
May 30th, 2013 at 11:00AM: Sean McLachlan from public domain image. Original photographer unknown.
Like every other nation involved in World War I, Italy suffered terribly. It joined the war in 1915, throwing its lot in with the Allies against the Central Powers. Italy's most immediate threat was its neighbor the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The border was mostly in the Alps and soldiers on both sides carved out ice caves from ...Gorizia: Italy's Overlooked Historic Border City
May 29th, 2013 at 9:00AM: Sean McLachlan
Visitors to Italy tend to skip Gorizia. Tucked away at the northeast edge of the country on the border with Slovenia, this small city tends to get bypassed on the way to Trieste or Slovenia.
I would have never gone there myself except that I was a guest author at the city's annual history and book fair, the èStoria Festival. Now in its ninth year, the festival is drawing ...A Vintage Submarine And Icebreaker In Tallinn's Seaplane Harbour
Feb 22nd, 2013 at 10:00AM:
Tallinn has been an important port and Estonia's connection with the world since before recorded history. Because of this, the city has not one, but two museums dedicated to the sea. The Maritime Museum is housed in Fat Margaret, an old cannon tower that once protected the harbor. It has the usual assortment of old photos and gear, along with a very cool exhibit on sunken ships.
The other ...Retreating Italian Glacier Reveals Dead From World War I
Oct 2nd, 2012 at 1:00PM: Two soldiers' bodies from World War I have been discovered on an Italian mountain, the Telegraph reports.
Workers on the Presena glacier in the Trentino-Alto Adige region of the Dolomites in Italy found the bodies at an altitude of 9,850 feet. The glacier has been receding because of an unusually hot summer and the workers were covering it with a giant tarpaulin to keep it from thawing further. ...Assassination Of The Romanovs Subject Of New Exhibition
Jun 28th, 2012 at 9:00AM:
In 1918, the emerging Communist government of Russia shocked the world when it assassinated Tsar Nicholas II, his family and members of his staff.
The Tsar had been blamed for a series of national setbacks. First, there was the humiliating defeat of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, followed quickly by a popular rebellion that was brutally suppressed, the pervasive influence of the unpopular ...Historic Battleship USS Texas Taking In Water, Leaking Oil
Jun 17th, 2012 at 10:00AM:
The USS Texas is America's oldest battleship. Commissioned in 1914, it fought in both World War I and World War II. Since 1948 it's been utilized as a museum at La Porte, Texas, on the outskirts of Houston.
Now the vessel is in peril. It's sprung a leak and is taking on water. So much water entered the ship that it started noticeably listing to port. The old oil tanks got flooded. While the ...
Centre Pompidou-Metz Recreates Artistic Life Of World War I
May 27th, 2012 at 11:00AM: In the first of a series of events to commemorate the upcoming centennial of World War I, the Centre Pompidou-Metz in France is hosting "1917," an exhibition of artistic life during that bloody conflict.
While millions were dying on the battlefield, the arts were flourishing in Europe. Much of it was centered on, or a reaction to, the most terrible war the world had yet seen. A large portion of ...Vorticism: avant-garde art at the Tate Britain, London
Jun 15th, 2011 at 1:00PM: In the years before the outbreak of World War One, European artists developed a variety of different styles to reflect the pace of change and industrialization in what used to be a traditional continent.
Cubism and Futurism were two of the biggest movements. One of the briefest and most vibrant was Vorticism. The Vorticists started around 1913 and focused on the hard lines and quick pace of the ...Exploring the tunnels under the Western Front
Jun 10th, 2011 at 11:00AM: The common image of the Western Front in World War One is of muddy trenches and artillery barrages. That was certainly the experience of most soldiers. But while huge armies slugged it out in the mud and ruin of France and Belgium, another war was going on underground. Sappers from both sides dug tunnels under enemy trenches, packed them with explosives, and blew them up.
The explosions were ...Volunteers needed to excavate Lawrence of Arabia's battles
Jun 7th, 2011 at 3:00PM: A team of British archaeologists working in Jordan is tracing the military campaign of Lawrence of Arabia, and they need your help.
T.E. Lawrence was an English archaeologist turned soldier who capture the public imagination during World War One when he helped the Arabs rebel against the Ottoman Empire. After its disastrous defeat at Gallipoli at the hands of the Ottomans, the British Empire ...Last WWI combat veteran dies: where can you see his legacy?
May 5th, 2011 at 8:30AM: Claude Choules, the last known combat veteran of WWI, has died aged 110. Born in England in 1901, he was too young to enlist in the army when the war broke out in 1914, so he waited until he was 15 and enlisted in the Royal Navy, where he saw service throughout the war.
Unlike most veterans, he liked the service and stayed on. While working as a visiting instructor for the Australian Navy, he ...Gallipoli battlefield being mapped by GPS
Apr 24th, 2011 at 10:00AM:
Archaeologists in Turkey are making a detailed survey of the famous World War One battle of Gallipoli. Using period military maps and GPS technology, they're mapping the old trenches and redoubts used by both sides.
Gallipoli was the scene of fierce fighting starting in 1915. A peninsula with highlands dominating the Dardanelles strait linking the Black and the Aegean seas, it guarded the ...Junkie steals 100-year-old morphine, doesn't get high
Apr 21st, 2011 at 10:00AM:
There's nobody quite as determined or stupid as a junkie.
Maybe it's hard to buy a hit on the streets of Cashmere, Washington, or maybe this particular junkie was short of cash. In any case, someone with a craving for drugs broke into the Cashmere Historic Museum and Pioneer Village and made off with a bottle of morphine pills dating back to World War One.
A doctor interviewed by the ...Touring World War One battlefields
Nov 11th, 2010 at 1:30PM:
On the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the First World War ended. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history and it redrew the map of Europe. As the 100th anniversary of the start of the war approaches in 2014, there's been an increased interest in visiting the places where it was fought.
War historian Mike Hanlon is leading three ...Exhibition explores Germany's relationship with Hitler
Oct 18th, 2010 at 1:30PM: More than sixty years after the end of World War Two, Germans are still struggling with their Nazi past. While most of the population is too young to be culpable for World War Two, their parents or grandparents were involved. Many Germans opposed Hitler's rise to power, but many more supported him, at least in the beginning.
A new exhibition at Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum explores ...Military museums in Rome
Sep 16th, 2010 at 12:00PM:
The Italian army gets a bad rap.
Sure, it made a poor showing in World War Two, but it was Italian Communist partisans who finally bagged Mussolini. Plus the Italians fought in one of the toughest fronts of the First World War, high in the Alps against the Germans and Austro-Hungarians. They endured freezing conditions on top of glaciers for months on end. One of the favorite tactics was to ...Startling underwater discovery at Gallipoli battlefield
Jun 23rd, 2010 at 4:00PM:
Underwater archaeologists exploring off the coast of Gallipoli, Turkey, have found a somber relic from the famous WWI battle. A barge that removed dead and wounded soldiers from the beachhead back to a hospital ship was found at the bottom of the sea. The team also found the wreck of the HMS Lewis, a British destroyer.
Gallipoli is a Turkish peninsula that controls access between the Black ...Touring the Western Front
Aug 26th, 2009 at 12:30PM: With the recent death of the last veteran to fight in the trenches of World War One, one of the twentieth century's most convulsive events has passed into history. From 1914-18, great armies battered at each other across a hellish landscape in which millions died. Old empires fell and new countries were born.
This photo gives an idea what it was like. A member of the Cheshire Regiment of the UK ...Veterans Day memorials and the Tomb of the Unknowns
Nov 12th, 2007 at 11:30AM: Years ago, when I was visiting my great aunt who lived near Ft. Knox, Kentucky, she took me to the base's officers' club for dinner. She was a major. Here's the thing. She became a major during WWII, and, years later, whenever she passed onto the base, she had the honor of being saluted at the gate by a young strapping male. She was in her mid 80s. Sweet. I was impressed.
With Veterans Day being ...
