Free Republic

I was reading our favorite (ahem) online encyclopedia and noticed something interesting: that the Dems completely dominated the House since the 1950s until circa 1994. How did they pull that off? We're talking 40-50 years until that Republican "revolution". Now I know why it was named as such. What lessons can we learn? It's well before my time but figured FR might know the historical answer! Is it something to do with how districts are/were apportioned which is actually very topical and in the news right now?

The oldest son of Robert F. Kennedy, denounced the possible parole of the Palestinian man convicted of killing his father in California in 1968. "I understand that there are differing views about ending the sentence of this killer, including within my own family. But emotions and opinions do not change facts or history," former congressman Joseph P. Kennedy II said. "The prisoner killed my father because of his support of Israel," Kennedy wrote in a separate statement. "The man was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. Yet he now may walk free, no doubt to the cheers of those who...

West Milford's Jen Pawol made history Saturday afternoon in Atlanta. The former standout catcher from North Jersey became the first female umpire to work a Major League Baseball regular season game.

ARLINGTON, Va. (AP) — Restoring a memorial to the Confederacy that was removed from Arlington National Cemetery at the recommendation of Congress will cost roughly $10 million total, a U.S. Army official said Wednesday — the latest development in a Trump administration effort to combat what it calls “erasing American history.”Once back in the cemetery, the monument — described a few years ago as “problematic from top to bottom” — will also feature panels nearby that will offer context about its history, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity about a project still in progress.The Pentagon expects it to...

Can people like this even be brought into the fold of sanity and morality?History teacher on TikTok says that Incan child sacrifices were “kind” and “voluntary.” Children were merely left to freeze to death, which isn’t so bad when you think about it. She blames white people for having a judgmental view of human sacrifice. pic.twitter.com/PuB26tmVQj — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) August 5, 2025The hill she’s going to “die on” is the human-sacrifice-isn’t-all-that-bad hill? Spoken like a committed leftist. She must feel pretty virtuous and anti-racist, rattling off words like “Mochica” and “Tahuantinsuyu” and “Quechua” because she’s sooo educated and multicultural.In...

Eighty years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, this analysis explores Operation Downfall, the massive Allied invasion of Japan that was averted by Tokyo’s surrender. The two-stage plan, Operations Olympic and Coronet, would have involved more than twice the forces of the Normandy landings and was expected to be unimaginably costly.

Under the order, Trump directed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to determine whether statues have been removed since the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 to 'perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.' But Pike did lead a regimen of Native Americans in Arkansas who sided with the Confederacy and were accused of scalping Union troops in an 1862 battle. He eventually received a pardon from President Andrew Johnson for his wartime actions and went on to become a prominent member of...

The F-117 Nighthawk, the world’s first operational stealth aircraft, was officially retired in 2008 but continues to fly regularly. The U.S. Air Force still uses the iconic jet as a cost-effective platform for several key missions. Primarily, it serves as a unique “aggressor” trainer, simulating foreign stealth aircraft like China’s J-20 to prepare U.S. pilots for modern threats.

At the twilight of the Roman republic, few figures loom larger -- or cast darker shadows -- then Lucas Cornelius Sulla. Born into a once proud but impoverished family Sulla's journey from obscurity to unmatched power is one of the most tumultuous, ruthless, and consequential sagas in Roman history. His life traverses a landscape of war, betrayal, political manipulation, and personal ambition- all set against the backdrop of a crumbling Republic and the rising intentions that would ultimately birth an Empire.This episode doesn't just recount Sulla's meteoric rise; it explores the deeper currents that carried him forward in the...

On November 7, 1492, the Ensisheim meteorite was observed to fall in a wheat field outside the walled town of Ensisheim in then Alsace, Further Austria (now France).It was a stony, triangular-shaped meteorite weighing 127 kilograms. The object can still be seen in Ensisheim's Museum, the sixteenth-century Musée de la Régence.Upon impact, the meteorite created a 1-meter (3 ft 3 in) deep hole. Its fall through the Earth's atmosphere was witnessed at a distance of up to 150 kilometers from where it eventually landed.People living in neighboring areas gathered at the location to raise the meteorite from its impact hole....

August 2, 1776, is one of the most important but least celebrated days in American history when 56 members of the Second Continental Congress started signing the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia. Officially, the Congress declared its freedom from Great Britain on July 2, 1776, when it approved a resolution in a unanimous vote. After voting on independence on July 2, the group needed to draft a document explaining the move to the public. It had been proposed in draft form by the Committee of Five (John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson) and it took...

The McDonnell XF-85 Goblin was a bizarre Cold War experiment: a tiny, egg-shaped “parasite fighter” designed to be carried inside the bomb bay of a massive B-36 bomber. The plan was to launch the Goblin mid-air to defend the bomber from interceptors and then retrieve it on a trapeze. The concept was a complete failure.

The Horten Ho 229 was a German flying-wing jet prototype developed in the final days of World War II. National Security Journal was given a guided tour of the plane’s remains at the Smithsonian. Often called the “Nazi stealth fighter” for its resemblance to the modern B-2 bomber, the aircraft was a radical design that was decades ahead of its time.

Mysterious Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions may point to Moses and Joseph as historical figures, sparking global scholarly controversy. A groundbreaking proto-thesis by independent scholar Michael S. Bar-Ron suggests exactly that. After eight years of rigorous epigraphic analysis, Bar-Ron argues that two inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim, an ancient turquoise mining site on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, contain the Semitic phrase “This is from MŠ” — a possible early rendering of the name Moses (Moshe). The inscriptions, dated to Egypt’s late 12th Dynasty during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, are written in Proto-Sinaitic, considered one of the world’s earliest alphabetic scripts. According to...

In a groundbreaking archaeological discovery, Israeli researchers have unearthed a 5,500-year-old flint blade workshop near Kiryat Gat, southern Israel—the first of its kind ever found in the region. Announced by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), the Early Bronze Age site sheds new light on the technological ingenuity and social complexity of ancient Canaanite civilization.The excavation, carried out at the Naḥal Qomem site—also referred to as Gat-Govrin or Zeita—revealed a full-scale production center where highly skilled craftsmen manufactured long, razor-sharp flint blades. This prehistoric workshop marks a major milestone in understanding the early development of urban society and professional specialization in...

The U.S. Air Force made a “strategic blunder” in 1991 by choosing the YF-22 over the more advanced YF-23 prototype. The YF-23 was a more futuristic design, prioritizing the all-aspect stealth, speed, and range needed for modern, beyond-visual-range combat.The Air Force, however, being risk-averse, chose the more conventional and maneuverable YF-22 (or F-22) because it clung to outdated dogfighting dogmas.

Despite being officially retired in 2008, the U.S. Air Force has confirmed that a fleet of approximately 45 F-117A Nighthawk stealth aircraft (or commonly known as the F-117 Stealth Fighter) will continue flying until at least 2034. The iconic jets are not designed for combat, but now serve in critical new roles. They act as “red air” aggressors for realistic pilot training, test advanced technologies like new “mirror-like” coatings, and serve as proxies for other stealth platforms.

Decades before the rumored SR-72 “Darkstar,” America had already conquered hypersonic flight with the X-15 rocket plane. In 1967, this remarkable experimental aircraft, developed by North American Aviation, reached a stunning speed of Mach 6.7, a record for a crewed, powered aircraft that remains unbroken to this day.

The Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, the world’s first operational stealth aircraft, was a revolutionary bomber deceptively designated as a “fighter” to attract the Air Force’s best pilots. Born from the top-secret “Have Blue” program, the “Wobblin’ Goblin” proved its worth during the 1991 Gulf War, where it struck heavily defended targets in Baghdad with impunity on the opening night of the air campaign.

According to a statement released by Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), LMU researcher Enrique Jiménez was able to decipher a Babylonian hymn that had been lost for 2,000 years. Jiménez, in collaboration with the University of Baghdad, is working on digitizing all cuneiform tablets from the legendary ancient Sippar Library, once located on the banks of the Euphrates River north of Babylon. Using artificial intelligence, the team was able to identify 30 different fragmentary pieces from the same composition, which turned out to be a previously unknown hymn consisting of 250 lines. The piece was written by an ancient...