Navigating the Heartache WWI Brings
Molasses. Chances are it’s something you don’t have in your pantry, but 100 years ago it was a household staple. Molasses is processed from sugar cane and is used as a sweetener; it is a dark brown, barely viscous liquid. One January day, molasses also became synonymous with death. An industrial accident in Boston, known…
The Lusitania is perhaps the most famous ocean liner to be sunk during World War I. At the start of the war, the liner was less than a decade old. Built by Cunard, the vessel, for a time, was the world’s largest ship. It also won the coveted Blue Riband award for crossing the Atlantic…
Many of the soldiers who fought for the British Empire in World War I, including those in Princess Patricia’s Light Infantry, were veterans of the Boer War, also known as the South African War or the Anglo-Boer War. What is the Boer War? It was two wars that occurred in South Africa involving the Boers,…
In the early morning of April 18, 1906, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked San Francisco. Within minutes it became one of the most devastating natural disasters of the 20th century, coming just a few years after the Galveston Hurricane. The quake had been preceded for decades by smaller earthquakes, foreshadowing what was to come. At…
Everyone knows the story of RMS Titanic: The largest ship ever built, on its maiden voyage, hits an iceberg and sinks. There weren’t enough lifeboats on board, resulting in more than 1,500 passengers and crew dying. But how many people know the story of what happened after the Carpathia rescued the survivors? Recovery The CS…
Decades before the Jewish Holocaust there was another slaughter of an innocent minority group, this one lesser known to history. It was the Armenian Genocide of World War I. Historians estimate anywhere from 600,000 to 1.3 million Armenians were killed during the genocide. It was the continuation of the mass murder of Armenians that have…
Decades before O.J. Simpson was charged with the murder of his ex-wife, there was another court case labeled “the trial of the century”. The case was known as the Thaw-White Murder, and it involved everything that makes crimes compelling to the general public – a celebrity, salacious sex and jealousy. Evelyn Nesbit The celebrity at…
A lesser known, but equally important, member of the Central Powers was the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The assassination of its archduke sparked World War I. The empire came into existence in 1867 when the Kingdom of Hungary and the Empire of Austria entered into a dual monarchy. The following year, the Kingdom of Croatia and Slavonia…
Understand the history of Russia and you understand modern Russia. It is a nation that has been plagued for centuries by tyrants, wars, political unrest and social equality. This all came to a head during The Russian Revolution. The revolution also led to the Russia withdrawing from World War I via the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.…
The harsh reality of war is that if affects everyone, combatant or not, and compounds misery. The European powers involved in World War I, especially, made great sacrifices. Not only were battles fought on their home soil with horrible death tolls, but citizens faced enemy attack, supply and food shortages, and starvation. Food Rationing Food…