Featured Articles
America’s WWI Commission on Training Camp Activities
Founding the Commission The idea for the Commission for Training Camp Activities (CTCA) emerged before the United States went to war. In August of 1916, with the prospect of American involvement in World War I [...]
American Failure: WWI Combat Aircraft Production
The United States did not produce any aircraft of its own design for use at the front during World War I. American industry did make two contributions to the airwar. Building the British designed DH-4, [...]
Philadelphia’s Little Italy Responds to Its Motherland’s Declaration of War in 1915
By May 1915, anticipation and apprehension had visibly increased within the Italian colony of Philadelphia. As the Chamber of Deputies in Rome deliberated the decision that would bring their nation to war, Philadelphia’s Italians gathered [...]
The Santa Claus Ship of WWI is needed again
Author Lilian Bell had a wonderful idea for Christmas. The year was 1914 and she could not stop thinking of the suffering children in Europe as World War One raged. She had to help them. [...]
Arsenal of Democracy: A History of RIA from WWI to WWII
ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. – The Spanish-American War, and the subsequent Philippine-American War was Rock Island Arsenal’s baptism of fire. These engagements transformed the post from a sleepy backwater to a modern 20th Century arsenal. [...]
The Battle of Nauset Beach — Inside the Little-Known 1918 German Bombardment of Cape Cod
THE U.S. ENTERED the First World War on April 6, 1917, but the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) did not begin operations in France until July. A year later—although it is now mostly forgotten—the U.S. state of [...]
The Forgotten Incident That Helped Suck The US Into WWI
Not the Zimmermann telegram or the Lusitania There are two big misconceptions surrounding the United States’ entry into the Great War. First, most people believe that the United States was truly neutral during the first [...]
Shared memories of few comments piece together WWI experience
Oliver H. Oswald shared little about his wartime experience with his family and friends after he came and settled on a farm in Muscotah. Oliver’s son, Floyd Oswald said what little he knows about his [...]
Remembering the veterans who marched on DC to demand bonuses during the Depression, only to be violently driven out by active-duty soldiers
The Bonus Army March is a forgotten footnote of American history. It involved as many as 30,000 mostly unemployed veterans who converged on Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand an [...]
