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Our President may be a well-educated and a very smart guy, but he seems to have skipped out on his world history classes. He certainly would have learned the absolutely true saying that “history repeats itself.” He would also know that any dithering with ISIS will only cause us more pain and lost lives in the future. History does repeat itself, and regularly. A perfect example has been on display with the debt crisis in Argentina. The country has defaulted on its debt. Its President, Cristina Kirchner, did not accept blame for the default. She pointed the finger at two...

Noted presidential historian David Pietrusza discusses the origins and development of the first World War, one hundred years ago.

SWINDON, England, July 28, 2014 /Standard Newswire/ -- 100 years ago, on 28 July 1914, the first shots of World War I were fired. Over the following four years, 16 million lives were lost as 65 million men from 32 countries were drawn into the conflict. The book that was read and cherished by people on both sides of the conflict was the Bible. To commemorate the First World War centenary, Bible Society in England and Wales has been looking back at its records to trace the extent and impact of its Scripture distribution during the war years. What they...

One of the forgotten battles of the first world war was fought for Chilean dirt. It wasn't just any dirt, though – it was caliche, a whitish substance rich in the crucial mineral sodium nitrate. Nitrates are the active ingredient of bombs and bullets.

The famed Dutch exotic dancer who was executed in 1917 in France for passing information to the Germans was stoic in her final moments, newly released documents reveal. She remained stoic to the end. The famous World War I spy known as "Mata Hari" did not reveal anything during her last prison interrogation before she was executed by a French firing squad, recently revealed top secret files from the British intelligence agency MI5, reports The Star. The former Dutch exotic dancer whose name was Gertruda Margaretha Zelle never made a full confession nor gave up the name of any accomplices...

Heathrow Airport has been forced to defend its security after a pair of students smuggled two large World War I artillery shells on to a plane and flew to the US. Baggage screeners made the discovery when the teenagers landed in Chicago, sparking a major incident. It is believed they picked up the 75mm munitions as souvenirs while on a school trip to a former artillery range in France. The find prompted the evacuation of O’Hare International Airport by the FBI before officials concluded there was no risk of the shells exploding. It is not clear how the students, aged...

On this date in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked the United States Congress to declare war on Germany, following the publication of the Zimmerman Telegram (in which Germany offered to finance Mexico's entry into the war on their side and for Mexico to attempt to reconquer Texas, New Mexico and Arizona) and Germany's resumption of submarine attacks on American ships. Congress would declare war on April 6th.

The American Humanist Association filed a lawsuit last week in federal court in Maryland calling for the removal of Bladensburg’s 40-foot Memorial Peace Cross, which honors men from Prince George’s County who died during World War I. The association and three individual plaintiffs contend that the cross, which is on state property, violates the constitutional principle of separation of church and state. The cross was dedicated in 1925. ...One of the individual plaintiffs, Steven Lowe of Washington, contends that the cross "associates a Christian religious symbol with the state and gives the impression that the state supports and approves of...

World War I began 100 years ago this summer. It's a centennial that goes beyond mere remembrance; the consequences of that conflict are making headlines to this day. To underline that, All Things Considered wanted to turn history on its head and ask historians and listeners alike: What if World War I had never happened? (Submit your answer in the form below.) If that sounds like an unlikely exercise, compare it to an even more unlikely event — the one that occurred on June 28, 1914, in the city of Sarajevo. It was the spark that ignited a global conflagration,...

World War I may have ended in 1918, but the violence it triggered in the Middle East still hasn't come to an end. Arbitrary borders drawn by self-interested imperial powers have left a legacy that the region has not been able to overcome. Damascus, year three of the civil war: The 4th Division of the Syrian army has entrenched itself on Kassioun Mountain, the place where Cain is said to have slain his brother Abel. United Nations ballistics experts say the poison gas projectiles that landed in the Damascus suburbs of Muadamiya and Ain Tarma in the morning hours of...

'A British PoW captured by the Germans in World War I was freed to see his dying mother - but went back to the prison camp after giving the Kaiser 'his word' he would return. Capt Robert Campbell, aged 29, was gravely injured and captured just weeks after Britain declared war on Germany in July, 1914. But after two years in Magdeburg Prisoner of War Camp, the British officer received word from home his mother Louise Campbell was close to death. He speculatively wrote to Kaiser Wilhelm II, begging to be allowed home to visit his mother one final time....

A British soldier was freed from a German POW camp during World War One to see his dying mother - and kept his promise to the Kaiser by returning, historians have discovered. Captain Robert Campbell, aged 29, was captured just weeks after Britain declared war on Germany in July, 1914. But after two years in Magdeburg Prisoner of War Camp the British officer received word from home his mother Louise Campbell was close to death. He speculatively wrote to Kaiser Wilhelm II begging to be allowed home to visit his mother one final time. Incredibly the German leader granted the...

Ten years ago, writer Richard Rubin set out to talk to every living American veteran of World War I he could find. It wasn't easy, but he tracked down dozens of centenarian vets, ages 101 to 113, collected their stories and put them in a new book called The Last of the Doughboys. He tells NPR's Melissa Block about the veterans he talked to, and the stories they shared. On how he found the veterans, after the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion came up short"In 1998, the government of France had started awarding the...

This recollection was submitted to my Chocolate Chronicle--please submit your favorite chocolate recollections, especially if they may have Jewish connections. Dr. Marcus eats chocolate every day of his life and has reached the amazing age of 103. He remembers: 'I was the youngest of four children, the only boy. I had one Father and four Mothers. We owned one large Swiss chocolate bar. When World War I broke out in 1914, my Father showed us children the bar and said you can look at it, but you cannot eat it until the war is over, then each of you will...

Probably the most bracing aspect of Ira Katznelson's new history of the New Deal, Fear Itself, is his portrait of the marriage of progressive domestic policy and white supremacy. I knew the outlines of this stuff, but for a flaming commie like me, the extent of the embrace is hard to take: Far more enduring was the New Deal's intimate partnership with those in the South who preached white supremacy. For this whole period -- the last in American history when public racism was legitimate in speech and action -- southern representatives acted not on the fringes but as an...

Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Bob Morrison. President Obama’s choice of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for Sec. of Defense is a dangerous choice that telegraphs weakness toward Iran. In the Senate, Mr. Hagel compiled a worrisome record toward the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. It is Iran that backs Hezbollah in Lebanon. We haven’t heard much about the Cedar Revolution in that war-torn country. That’s because Hezbollah murdered the democratic leaders for reform. Iran is behind Hamas in Gaza. Hamas defeated the corrupt regime of Mahmoud Abbas in elections in Gaza that soon degenerated into civil war....

Franz Kafka is one of those authors whose name has become an adjective, as in Shakespearean or Faulknerian or this dictionary entry: Kafka-esque -- adj., referring to the nightmarish, surreal, illogical quality Franz Kafka evoked in works like "The Metamorphosis," "The Castle" and "The Trial." No wonder Franz Kafka was able to capture the maddeningly frustrating world of the modern bureaucrat so well. He was one. And a pretty good one, too: conscientious, adaptable, public-spirited and practical. At least to judge from the latest collection of his work, which is not a volume of short stories, but office memos...

Montenegro's Oct. 8, 1912, declaration of war on the Ottoman Turkish Empire and its Oct. 9 attack on neighboring Albania, an Ottoman protectorate, stunned Europe. Montenegro, a military midget, attacking Albania, another poor and backwater Balkan nowhere? Can a tiny statelet like Montenegro spark great havoc? When the spark strikes a powder keg of ethnic, sectarian and nationalist conflict, the tragic answer is yes. This week marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First Balkan War (October 1912 to May 1913). It was the second in a series of three wars that led to the great and not...

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