Free Republic

What I offer today is a dissertation I stumbled upon while doing research for a book I plan on writing. The subject of my book is the time when Jesus visited the Temple with His parents when He was 12. I was investigating the various rules and regulations concerning Jewish boys. While in my search I stumbled upon a few commentaries discussing what the age Christ's Disciples would have been. As usual, I found my self going on a tangent away from my main topic. However, this was one rabbit hole I enjoyed so much that I felt it worthy...

With the New Year quickly approaching, a new crop of wellness trends and resolutions will likely pop up. That being said, this WWII Air Force Veteran has an unlikely tip for living a long, healthy life: a daily can of Coors Light. Andrew E. Slavonic, the veteran who went viral in 2018 after connecting his longevity to the beer, turned 103 on Dec. 1. Two years ago, Slavonic first made news when Fox reported that he had enjoyed a Coors Light at 4 P.M. every day for over 20 years. According to his son Bob, Slavonic began drinking Coors in...

A wartime spy described as Winston Churchill's favourite has finally been remembered with a blue plaque. Christine Granville, who was born Krystyna Skarbek in Warsaw, joined British intelligence in 1939 and is said to have inspired Ian Fleming's spy character Vesper Lynd. She struggled after the war and was given cheap lodgings at a London hotel run by the Polish Relief Society. It was her home until she was murdered by a stalker in 1952, aged 44. The English Heritage Blue Plaque has been unveiled at the former Shelbourne Hotel (now 1 Lexham Gardens), in Kensington, and is inscribed with...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The United States will search for remains of several World War Two aircraft and airmen lost over the forested mountains of India's northeast, a U.S. commander said on Wednesday. The U.S. military says it lost some 430 Americans in 90 planes in India while they were on missions to resupply China's besieged army in the city of Kunming, desperately trying to hold out against the invading Japanese during World War Two. The wreckage of six U.S. planes have been found in the jungles of India's Arunachal Pradesh state, giving the U.S. Joint Prisoners of War/Missing in...

Regional World War plane wreckages found in ArunachalItanagar (PTI): Arunachal Pradesh is gradually becoming the missing link of hundreds of war heroes who disappeared while flying fighter planes during the Second World War in the eastern front. And no else but the state Governor Gen (Retd) J J Singh, former chief of Army staff, took notes on Monday evening from Oken Tayeng who had already spotted wreckages of aircraft of the Allied Forces in eight locations in Lohit, Dibang valley, Upper Siang and Papum Pare districts. It all started when Tayeng, a local tour operator, joined an American investigator...

BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) — The families of eight U.S. military men who died in a 1944 plane crash in the Himalayas want the Pentagon to step up efforts to recover their remains from the crash site discovered last year by a mountaineer. Exactly what happened to the B-24 bomber dubbed "Hot as Hell," was a mystery for more than 60 years. It disappeared while on a flight from Kunming, China, to Chabua, India, to pick up weapons and other supplies and return to base in China. Clayton Kuhles of Prescott, Ariz., a mountaineer who has made it his mission to...

FDR's Address to Joint Session of Congress

You should definitely rewatch 'It's A Wonderful Life' this Christmas, but the life of the real George Bailey is equally inspiring.“Celebrity” is lately becoming more and more synonymous with “easily-offended hypocrite who lectures fans to find a sense of self-morality.” Leonardo DiCaprio and Prince Harry shame us about climate change from private jets, while Harry Styles wears dresses to teach us about masculinity and Michelle Williams congratulates herself for killing her unborn child in the name of her career. There’s an ongoing epidemic of selfishness in Tinseltown. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if more stars found something other than themselves to...

I accidently ran across this story and it brought tears of pride to my eyes. What a generation of men! A story told by when the news was reported by real journalist!

Band of Brothers is showing on the History Channel

World War II hero Jim Feezel from Alabama, who drove a tank through the front gate of Dachau in Nazi Germany to liberate prisoners at the infamous concentration camp, has died. James Martin Feezel died on Thursday, Oct. 15, according to Roselawn Funeral Home in Decatur. He was 95. In a video interview project by Gary Cosby Jr. with The Decatur Daily in 2015, on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, Feezel recalled the moment his commanding officer told him to break through the gate at Dachau on April 29, 1945. “We were facing the front gate at Dachau...

On November 23, 1944, a Royal Air Force antiaircraft unit stationed outside Cortonburg, Belgium observed a B-17 Flying Fortress flying towards them. The massive U.S. Army Air Forces bomber approached at high speed with its landing gears down. With no landing scheduled, the base personnel presumed it was an emergency landing situation and reacted accordingly. The Flying Fortress proceeded to execute that emergency landing by plowing into a nearby field. Having just barely avoided crashing into the unit’s guns, the aircraft’s landing was so fast and uncontrolled that the propellers snapped off and both wings slapped into the earth during...

More than 750 people had been evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal outside the town of Swinoujscie where the Tallboy bomb used by Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) was found. It weighed nearly 12,000 lbs, including almost 5,300 lbs of explosive. "The deflagration process turned into detonation. The object can be considered as neutralized, it will not pose any more threat," Second-Lieutenant Grzegorz Lewandowski, the spokesman of the 8th Coastal Defense Flotilla, was quoted as saying by state-run news agency PAP. "All mine divers were outside the danger zone."

The biggest World War Two bomb ever found in Poland exploded under water on Tuesday as navy divers tried to defuse it. More than 750 people had been evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal outside the town of Swinoujscie where the Tallboy bomb used by Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was found. It weighed nearly 5,400 kg, including 2,400 kg of explosive.

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1920, Gail Halvorsen was the second of Basil and Luella Halvorsen’s three children. Growing up on the family’s farm in Garland, Halvorsen graduated from Bear River High School in Tremonton. “Working on our small farm,” Halvorsen recalled, “I was the only tractor my dad had. This was during the Depression, of course, so we didn’t have any discretionary money. We did have a lot of love, though, and plenty to eat. We had no idea we were ‘disadvantaged.’ “In the springtime we had to thin the sugar beets, and that was a hard...

America is definitely not Europe, but we can find a number of parallels between European history and contemporary America. For example, we’ve previously written about the Italian Years of Lead as a possible template for urban unrest and low-level inter-tribal warfare in the United States. Another example of how things might play out in the United States is the Spanish Civil War. The Spanish Civil War is known to historians, amateur and professional alike, as the “dress rehearsal for the Second World War.” It is so termed because it pitted one side – which was equipped, armed and funded by...

A War Story for the Ages - During World War 2, the 7th BG's 9th Bomb Squadron was dispatched to destroy a railroad bridge at Pyinmana, about halfway between Rangoon and Mandalay and near two active enemy fighter bases. The formation was led by Col. Conrad F. Necrason, 7th BG commander. The B-24 on his right wing was piloted by 1st Lt. Lloyd Jensen whose copilot was 2d Lt. Owen J. Baggett. On that mission, Baggett was to earn a distinction believed to be unique in Air Force history. Before reaching Pyinmana, Burma, to destroy a bridge, the American B-24...

In 1941, German soldiers murdered more than 30,000 Jews from Kiev within one and a half days. What took place at the Babi Yar gorge was one of the most horrific massacres of all time. Berlin, September 29th, 2020 (The Berlin Spectator) — Eight decades ago, the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany’s army, was busy attacking and conquering the better part of Europe while murdering millions of Jews and members of other minorities in its death camps, forced labor camps and in massacres on streets, in woods and at other locations. Can it get any worse than shooting people on the street,...

An excellent video covering the First Battle of Savo Island in the Guadalcanal Campaign. Not our Navy's finest hour, but we learned some hard lessons that would serve us well in the future.

Live broadcast of takeoffs of the large variety of aircraft used in WWII. "Approximately 100 World War II aircraft will take to the sky in historically sequenced warbird formations. These formations will fly over the Washington Mall in two minute intervals. The formations will represent the War’s major battles, from Battle of Britain through the final air assault on Japan, and concluding with a missing man formation." https://ww2flyover.org/flyover-formations/