Military History
From the Archives: When Paris Went Dark
Another post from the past, this time from 2014. When Nazi troops marched into Paris in June, 1940, the city surrendered without firing a shot.* In When Paris Went Dark: The City of Light Under German Occupation, 1940-1944 , historian Ronald C. Rosbottom explores face-to-face interactions between occupiers and occupied, the effect of the Occupation…
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From the Archives: Quilting–Protection against More than Just the Cold
Another post from the archives, this one from 2013 *** When we think about quilting, we tend to think about hand-crafted patchwork coverlets and puffy down coats. We don’t think about armor. But in fact, quilted armor played an important role in European warfare from the time of the Crusades through the sixteenth century. The…
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Molly Pitcher(s?)
In 1876, caught up in the patriotic excitement of the first centennial of the American Revolution, the people of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, raised a stone inscribed “Molly Pitcher” over the previously unmarked grave of a local resident, Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley (ca. 1754–1832). In the years before her death, Hays claimed to have served at the…
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