How Can You Tell You’re About to Have a Civil War?
WIB politics October 25, 2017
The Iraqi Kurd’s vote for independence in September 2017 sent shockwaves through the region. The day after the vote, the Iraqi military conducted a military exercise with Turkey. The government in Baghdad grounded international flights in and out of Kurdish Regional Government territory. And the Turkish government threatened to... Read more
The Union Cavalry Raid That Inspired James Mattis
WIB historyWIB land August 10, 2017
On April 17, 1863, a former music teacher with a fear of horses — he was kicked in the head by one as a child — set off with 1,700 Union soldiers, the scouts in Confederate uniforms, on a raid deep into Mississippi. The raid by Col. Benjamin Grierson... Read more
It’s the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 and Union forces on Cemetery Ridge await the final Confederate assault. But instead of witnessing serried ranks of rebels marching across a mile of open ground into the maws of Yankee cannons, the bluecoat regiments are shocked... Read more
In December 1860, the United States was on the brink of civil war. South Carolina’s legislature had already passed an ordnance of secession and other states would soon follow suit. The nation’s capital Washington, D.C. was in a perilous position. Surrounded by secessionist Virginia and ambivalent Maryland, the undefended... Read more
John S. Mosby, known as the “Gray Ghost,” was a Virginian who became legendary for his leadership of Mosby’s Rangers—a band of Confederate guerrilla fighters that harassed the Union Army and went toe-to-toe with George Armstrong Custer in the Shenandoah Valley. Mosby is still highly regarded as a strategist... Read more
Originally published on May 1, 2015. On April 22, members of the U.S. Army’s 707th Explosive Ordinance Disposal Company left their base on a mission to detonate a very unusual object. Construction crews had discovered an Absterdam Type 2/3 Projectile in Ilwaco, Washington. This type of explosive artillery shell... Read more