RealClearHistory Articles

At 9:02 a.m. on a terrifically hot late September Monday in San Diego, Pacific Southwest Airlines flight 182, banking steeply over the North Park neighborhood on final approach to Lindbergh Field, clipped a four-seat Cessna model 172 on a training flight. The resulting crash of September 25, 1978 killed 137 people in the air and seven on the ground, at the time the nation’s worst air disaster in number of deaths. It remains seared into San Diego’s collective past, symbolized by an iconic photo of the three-engine PSA 727 jet, right wing aflame, plummeting toward homes. Yet long...

While we may assume that we are currently in the most profoundly and rapidly changing era of humankind, the century spanning from 1450 to 1550 A.D. stands out as a period of such deep and interconnected change that it can be rightfully called the most amazing century in history. While other eras have seen great events, this particular hundred-year span was a cauldron where science, religion, politics, economics, and art were all fundamentally and irreversibly transformed. It was a time when the medieval world was dismantled, and the foundations of the modern era were laid. The Dawn of a New...

As night followed night during 1940-1941, civilians and civil defence teams across Britain were confronted by shocking sights and sounds. The spine-tingling, stomach-churning wail of air raid sirens. The distinctive, sinister drone of enemy aircraft engines.  The whistle of falling high explosive bombs, their ear-splitting detonation and lethal blast waves. The metallic tinkling sound of incendiaries dropping onto rooftops before igniting in a white-green flash. The dazzling, probing beams of searchlights and pounding anti-aircraft guns. The deafening roar of collapsing buildings....

As the Blitz progressed (from 7 Spetember 1940-11 May 1941) the undulating sound of German bomber engines became a nightly, dreaded sound over London and other British cities. The Luftwaffe fleet sent against London was composed of waves of twin-engined Heinkel HE-111, Dornier Do-17 and Junkers JU-88 aircraft from Luftflotten (Air Fleets) Two and Three, based in northern France and the Low Countries. They were accompanied by Bf-109E fighters by day but flew unescorted to the capital by night. From October to November 1940 – the so-called ‘Messerschmitt Month’...

September 2025 marks 85 years since the start of the Blitz, the systematic attempt by Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to bomb Britain into submission from 7 September 1940 to 11 May 1941. 'The Blitz' - the phrase derives from the German word 'Blitzkrieg' ('lightning war') - is remembered as a national ordeal which marked all who endured it. Heavy air raids took place on London and other British cities for over eight months (243 days and nights). Nazi Germany’s area bombing campaign against Britain during the Second World War can be divided into several distinct phases. The Blitz was...

The living memory of World War II is passing away. In April, the oldest known survivor of Pearl Harbor died at 106 years old. A few weeks ago, a 102-year old veteran who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944) entered his eternal reward.  Sadly, less than one percent of the war’s veterans are still alive. However, more troubling and dark, the increasing deaths of witnesses — those who endured the conflict and its horrors — has been coupled with the rise of revisionist ahistorical conspiracies about the Second World War. Worse,...

As President Donald J. Trump sends National Guard troops to help reduce crime in the nation’s cities, lessons from Edmund Burke, a prominent conservative politician in Britain during the 18th-century Revolutionary Era, remain relevant for Americans today. In a speech to Parliament, Burke issued a timeless political rights warning, stating, “If you take away the Civil Execution of justice, you maim and mangle the whole constitutional Polity of England.” The British legislator believed that the military should be used in policing roles as a last resort. He argued...

Sometime, someplace in the Judean Hills in the year 132 the storm broke. It had been a long time coming, but even so it shocked the Romans. It shocked them enough that it may have cost them a legion and possibly the life of the governor of the province of Judea. “May have” is necessary because the sources of evidence are scarce and because the detective work that has gone into reconstructing the war is as conjectural as it is ingenious. And yet, the story is as dramatic as any of the Jewish revolts against Rome and more decisive. The war was the third of the three major Jewish...

Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, with the signing of the peace treaty aboard the USS Missouri. On August 22 the last American flying ace of the war died at the age of 103. My own father passed away last December just short of 98. He was about as young as someone could be and still be a WWII veteran. What had been 16 million servicemen is now about sixty thousand. The GI generation or “greatest generation” is rapidly passing away, and their view of World War II as “the good war” may pass with them. All US wars...

Theodore Roosevelt felt antsy amid the 1904 campaign season.  He was up for reelection, but the inexhaustible TR couldn’t hit the trail. Custom dictated that a sitting president not actively electioneer on his own behalf; surrogates alone would have to carry his message.  “I think it depresses you a little to be the only man in the country who cannot take part in the campaign for the presidency,” a fellow Republican wrote him. Indeed. A frustrated Roosevelt told his son, “I could cut [the Democratic nominee] into ribbons if I could get at him in the open. But...

On April 4, 2003, as the invasion of Iraq reached its critical phase, the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rdInfantry Division, seized Saddam International Airport–codenamed Objective Lions–on the western outskirts of Baghdad. The operation marked one of the most decisive conventional victories of the war. It didn’t hinge on advanced sensors or over-the-horizon fires. It hinged on tempo–speed, initiative, and sustained shock. I was there, leading an infantry platoon in Charlie Company, 2-7 Infantry, attached to Task Force 3-69 Armor. We had just come off a...

August 8th marks 80 years since the dawn of the atomic age. This is a story about two cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and two remarkable men: Jacob Beser and Tsutomu Yamaguchi. Beser, a First Lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps at the time, was the only crewmember aboard both planes that dropped the atomic bombs. Tsutomu Yamaguchi, meanwhile, is famously known as the only person officially recognized by the Japanese government to have survived both bombings. The first bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, at 8:15 a.m. local time, when the B-29 bomber Enola Gay released an atomic bomb...

822 years ago, on August 1st of 1203, crusaders looked on as an elderly blind man and his irresponsible son were crowned Roman Emperors in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, the capital of the Christian Roman Empire. Despite the splendor of the coronation rites, it must have dawned on at least some of the crusaders that they were not supposed to be here at all. These very men had taken vows three years ago to deliver Jerusalem, which had been lost to the Muslims under Saladin in 1187. Since that time, they had gotten themselves in debt to the Venetians whom they had hired to ferry them...

As the Supreme Court wraps up its annual flurry of blockbuster rulings, it’s easy to focus on the winners—the parties who prevailed, the doctrines that triumphed, the justices whose views carried the day. But the end of the term is also a good time to remember that in the long arc of constitutional history, some of the most important victors began as losers. No one embodies that better than Myra Bradwell. In 1873, Bradwell—a brilliant legal mind, newspaper founder, and civil rights reformer—was denied the right to practice law by the Supreme Court. In an 8–1...

In Noah Hawley’s Fargo, a fictional tale of pervasive crime and tested loyalty, Kansas City mafia hitman Mike Milligan ponders the following: "Ironically, in astronomy, the word 'revolution' means 'a celestial object that comes full circle.' Which, if you think about it, is pretty funny, considering here on earth it means change." As our nation marches toward its 250th anniversary next year, some of today’s social and political dynamics continue to shift—and not for the better. A self-proclaimed democratic socialist mayoral candidate in New York City...

Some souls shine like stars in life—and blaze even more brightly in death, defying the darkness that abhors their light and seeks to extinguish it. And yet the stars, steadfast in their courses, shine on—and the darkness cannot overcome them. Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna—“Ella” to those who knew her—was one such soul. Once hailed as the most beautiful woman in Europe, she was born a princess of Hesse-Darmstadt and married into the Romanov dynasty at its zenith. But her most extraordinary acts came not in the splendor of court life, but in its...

 The ancient Romans expanded their power and influence by treaties, alliances, and wars, eventually controlling the Italian peninsula, assimilating the neighboring Etruscan culture to the northeast and the Greek culture in the southern part of the peninsula. From Italy, the Roman power extended over the littoral Mediterranean, gradually incorporating a large part of Europe, Asia Minor, and much of the North African coast–conquests in three continents, from the British isles to the Middle East. The Romans reached a pinnacle of civilization disseminating the Graeco-Roman culture...

There is a sickness inside our hearts. It aches for something brighter, better, a more resplendent mode of being. God, perhaps. Or temporary deliverance from the pain of being alive, and of knowing we will die. It urges us to create something: family; home; work; and art. To contribute something good and useful to future generations. But it also impels us to assert ourselves here and now, to compete for power over others. Please allow me to introduce myself … Because it feels good to have power—telling people what to do, getting things done. The boss sets the agenda, defines...

To say the international environment has become more challenging is an understatement. China, Russia, and North Korea explicitly challenge American leadership, and they aim to erase America’s military lead. Iran and its proxies have been wounded by recent attacks, but they also wish to degrade American power. The U.S. must up its game in appropriations, technology, rapid acquisition of new weapons, shipbuilding, training, doctrine, and recruiting. Equally important is the sound preparation of new officers at the Air Force Academy, West Point, and Annapolis. Three history courses are...