Free Republic

On March 4, the world´s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, celebrated her 117th birthday in Catalonia. Morera was born in San Francisco, USA, but returned to Spain with her family at the age of eight, spending the rest of her life in Catalonia. For the past 23 years, she has stayed in the nursing home, Residencia Santa Maria del Tura. “Order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” is what Morera credits her health and longevity to. Morera´s family arrived in Barcelona...

A complex network of tunnels located near the northeastern French town of Braye-en-Laonnois, houses the memories of thousands of World War One soldiers who left their mark on the walls the Froidmont quarry.A maze-like network of tunnels can be found near the northeastern French town of Braye-en-Laonnois.These extraordinary tunnels house the memories of thousands of World War One soldiers who left their mark on the walls of the Froidmont quarry, not far from the scene of the horrific Second Battle of the Aisne.More than 20 kilometres of limestone walls bare over 1,000 inscriptions, drawings and carvings from German, French and...

Researchers have recovered a treasure trove of World War I artifacts from a cave shelter in northern Italy revealed by the melting of a glacier. During the war, the cave shelter housed 20 Austrian soldiers stationed at Mount Scorluzzo on the Alpine front, close to the famous Stelvio Pass, historian Stefano Morosini told CNN Tuesday. While people knew the shelter existed, researchers were only able to enter it in 2017 as the surrounding glacier had melted, added Morosini, who is scientific coordinator of the heritage project at Stelvio National Park and teaches at the University of Bergamo. Inside they found...

* The head was brought home by a British soldier who fought in Egypt during WWI * Remained in soldier's family for a century and is now being sold by a descendant A rare 2,800-year-old mummified Egyptian head brought to the UK by a British soldier during the First World War has gone on sale. The artefact, which was stuffed away in a cupboard for decades because 'it is not everyone's cup of tea', has an eye-watering price tag of £20,000. It has been carbon dated to between 800 BC and 750 BC. The head remained in the unnamed soldier's...

[snip] The Italo-Turkish War 1911 was one of the last classic imperial wars over colonial processions between two great powers. But it was in many ways also a first glimpse into what would come during the First World War: trenches, artillery, combat aircraft, motorboat attacks. This war in Ottoman Libya was fought between the Italian Army and Ottoman-led local Senussi forces. [/snip]Forgotten Prelude To WW1 -- Italo-Turkish War 1911-1912 (History Documentary)The Great War | 31:39 | 1.57M subscribers | 1.3M views | 1 year ago

World War I had no good guys and no winners. France rightly sought the return of the provinces Germany had annexed in 1870. Russia rightly feared that German influence would sever its industrial centers and tax base in the Western parts of it its empire; England feared that Germany would encroach on its overseas empire; Germany feared that Russia’s railroad system would overcome its advantage in mobility and firepower. None of them wanted a war, but each of them decided that it was better to fight in 1914 than fight later at a disadvantage. Historian Christopher Clark in his 2013...

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - An “Australian light horse brigade” of history enthusiasts rode through the Israeli desert town of Beersheba on Tuesday to commemorate the 100th anniversary of a World War One cavalry charge that helped reshape the Middle East. The victory by the Australia and New Zealand Corps (ANZAC) in the Battle of Beersheba, a biblical town in what was Ottoman Palestine in 1917, broke a strategic Turkish defense line and led to the conquest of the Holy Land by British imperial forces. Dozens of history buffs, including descendents of the soldiers of the 4th Brigade of the Australian...

WXYZ) — A non-live WWI ammunition round was discovered at a Lansing residence over the weekend containing a hidden treasure trove of old coins and bills, Michigan State Police said on Twitter. According to police, MSP assisted Lansing Police after people cleaning out a family member’s house discovered what appeared to be an ammunition round. Bomb squad reportedly determined it was not a live round. (Pics at source)

Many Americans have no idea why we celebrate Veterans Day on November 11. Those who know that the holiday began as Armistice Day typically think of it as a day of victory and peace. However, for those on the ground in Europe the last twenty-four hours before the cessation of hostilities on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918, that day was nothing less than hell on earth.

Whilst undertaking detailed seabed scanning for the development of windfarm projects in the East Anglia Zone, off the coast of Norfolk and Suffolk, windfarm developers ScottishPower Renewables (SPR) and Vattenfall uncovered something they weren't expecting -- an 'uncharted' wreck of a WWI German submarine, missing in action since 1915... SPR and Vattenfall used advanced sonar technology to scan over 6,000km2 of the seabed in the Southern North Sea over two years, which is nearly 4 times the size of Greater London (1,583km2). This work is critical to understand seabed conditions, and allow the companies to design the layout of their...

Woodrow Wilson had no qualms about jailing people he disagreed with. His persecution of the Hutterites can attest to that. Campaigning for President of the United States in September 1912, “progressive” icon Woodrow Wilson said something that would gladden the heart of any libertarian: Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. That was two months before the election that Wilson won. He garnered...

A hundred years ago this week, a series of biggest battles that Europe were to witness between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 decided the fate of the continent as much as, if not more than, the Great War itself. In early August 1920, the newly resurrected, independent Poland saved the Eastern Europe, Germany and possibly the rest of the war-exhausted Europe from the triumphant Russian communism. As a result of a little known war in the distant corners of the continent, the status quo of the...

On this date in 1923, a German paramilitary was shot by a French firing squad near Dusseldorf for his anti-occupation sabotage efforts. Albert Leo Schlageter, a World War I veteran and conservative Catholic who signed up with the right-wing Freikorps and tangled with communists after the war, joined the fledging Nazi party when it absorbed his Freikorps unit in 1922. The next year, France occupied the Ruhr to secure war reparations payments then crippling Germany, which would do much to speed the rise of the Nazis in the years ahead. Schlageter was nabbed sabotaging railroad lines in resistance, and Berlin’s...

Virtually time travel back to 1918. Peering into this room in France is as if you are stepping into a time portal into the early 1900s. The bedroom, which belonged to a French soldier, hasn't been touched since 1918. If you drive three hours southwest of Paris, you'll find Belabre, a quaint French village with a population of fewer than 1,000. That is where you will discover the home of the parents of Hubert Guy Pierre Alphonse Rochereau. When World War I was ravaging Europe, a young Rochereau was deployed to the Belgian battlefield. Sadly, Dragoons' Second Lieutenant Hubert Rochereau...

The wreck of a World War One German armoured cruiser has been located off the Falkland Islands, where it was sunk by the British navy 105 years ago. SMS Scharnhorst was the flagship of German Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee's East Asia Squadron. It was sunk on 8 December 1914 with more than 800 men on board, including Vice-Adm von Spee himself. The leader of the search for the wreckage said the moment of discovery was "extraordinary".

DUSK June 27, 2014 / Photo by Aleksandra Rebic Today is Friday, June 27, 2014. Exactly 100 years ago today was the day before everything in the world changed forever. History tells us that it was a beautiful summer in 1914 - everything a summer should be. This peaceful atmosphere in Europe had only 24 hours left. The next day, June 28, 1914 was Vidovdan (St. Vitus Day), a most sacred day in Serbian history. It was also the day that an Austrian Archduke and his wife would come visiting and go for a ride in Sarajevo, a city in...

President Donald Trump laid a wreath at, and prayed over the interred remains of an unknown combatant of the Great War of 1914-1918 on Monday morning, during a visit to Westminster Abbey on his State Visit to the United Kingdom. The visit to the Abbey, the historic place of burial and coronations for English and British Kings and Queens for nearly 1,000 years, was hosted by British Royal Prince Andrew and the chapter officers of the Abbey itself. President Trump was driven from Buckingham Palace, where he had eaten lunch with Queen Elizabeth II, to the Abbey in the Presidential...

My wife was going through her late aunt's things and found a military pin for the 128th Overseas Batallion from Moose Jaw, Canada. Do any FReepers know the history of this unit? My wife's aunt was in the Home guard in WWII but it could have been her father's or a friend's from WWI.

Remembering Henry Johnson, the Soldier Called “Black Death” Henry Johnson suffered 21 wounds and rescued a soldier while repelling an enemy raid in the Argonne Forest in 1918 but died 11 years later a forgotten man Henry Johnson and the Harlem Hellfighters in a parade up Fifth Avenue upon their return to New York in February, 1919. (New York Division of Military and Naval Affairs) Like hundreds of thousands of young American men, Henry Johnson returned from World War I and tried to make a life for himself in spite of what he had experienced in a strange and distant...

Doctors in the early 1900s dismissed Spanish flu as a 'minor infection' just years before it killed 50 million people, according to scientists. Countless lives could have been saved if medics had taken it seriously and worked out how to stop the virus before the disastrous outbreak in 1918, researchers say. A study has found there were investigations as early as 1915 into a mysterious illness which was killing World War I soldiers in France and England. ...