Portal:History

The British government did not seriously consider using its nuclear weapons against Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War. The United Kingdom had ratified the Treaty of Tlatelolco which established a nuclear-weapon-free zone across Latin America in 1969 and made a commitment in the United Nations during 1978 not to use these weapons against non–nuclear powers. The strong international norms against the use of nuclear weapons also influenced British decision making. The British War Cabinet never contemplated the use of nuclear weapons but the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, may have done so separately when considering how she would respond to a serious defeat.

Four of the British Royal Navy warships which were sent to the South Atlantic following the invasion of the Falklands initially carried a total of thirty nuclear depth bombs as part of their standard armament. The Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Terence Lewin, wanted to retain them on the ships in case the Soviet Union became involved in the war but this was opposed by civilian Ministry of Defence staff. The War Cabinet decided on 8 April 1982 to have these weapons removed but reluctantly reversed this decision three days later due to the impracticality of offloading the depth bombs at that time. On 28 May, the War Cabinet decided that the weapons should be returned to the UK and many of them were shipped back before the end of the conflict. The presence of nuclear depth bombs in the naval task force was reported by journalists soon after the end of the war but not confirmed by the British government until 2003. (Full article...)

CSS General Earl Van Dorn was a cottonclad warship that was used by the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. She was purchased for Confederate service in New Orleans, Louisiana, in early 1862 to serve with the River Defense Fleet in the war's Western theater. She was converted into a cottonclad warship by installing an iron-covered framework of timbers on her bow that served as a ram, and protecting her machinery with timber bulkheads packed with cotton. A sidewheel steamer, she was 182 feet (55 m) long and was armed with a single 32-pounder cannon on the bow.

Having been assigned to defend the northern stretches of the Confederate-held portion of the Mississippi River, General Earl Van Dorn left New Orleans in late March 1862 and arrived at Memphis, Tennessee, early the next month. On May 10, she fought with the River Defense Fleet against the Union Navy in the Battle of Plum Point Bend, where she rammed and sank the ironclad USS Mound City. On June 6, General Earl Van Dorn was the only vessel of the River Defense Fleet to escape destruction or capture at the First Battle of Memphis. After withdrawing up the Yazoo River to Liverpool Landing, Mississippi, General Earl Van Dorn, along with two other Confederate warships, was burnt by the Confederates to prevent her capture by approaching Union vessels. (Full article...)

HMS Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armoured frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–1861. She was the name ship of the Warrior-class ironclads. Warrior and her sister ship HMS Black Prince were the first armour-plated, iron-hulled warships, and were built in response to France's launching in 1859 of the first ocean-going ironclad warship, the wooden-hulled Gloire. Warrior conducted a publicity tour of Great Britain in 1863 and spent her active career with the Channel Squadron. Obsolescent following the 1873 commissioning of the mastless and more capable HMS Devastation, she was placed in reserve in 1875, and was "paid off" – decommissioned – in 1883.

She subsequently served as a storeship and depot ship, and in 1904 was assigned to the Royal Navy's torpedo training school. The ship was converted into an oil jetty in 1927 and remained in that role until 1979, at which point she was donated by the Navy to The Maritime Trust for restoration. The restoration process took eight years, during which many of her features and fittings were either restored or recreated. When this was finished she returned to Portsmouth as a museum ship. Listed as part of the National Historic Fleet, Warrior has been based in Portsmouth since 1987. (Full article...)

Southampton Cenotaph is a First World War memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and located in Watts Park in the southern English city of Southampton. The memorial was the first of dozens by Lutyens to be built in permanent form and it influenced his later designs, including the Cenotaph in London. It is a tapering, multi-tiered pylon which culminates in a series of diminishing layers before terminating in a sarcophagus (or cenotaph, 'empty tomb') which features a recumbent figure of a soldier. In front is an altar-like Stone of Remembrance. The cenotaph contains multiple sculptural details including a prominent cross, the town's coat of arms, and two lions. The names of the dead are inscribed on three sides. Although similar in outline, later cenotaphs by Lutyens were much more austere and featured almost no sculpture. The design uses abstract, ecumenical features and lifts the recumbent soldier high above eye level, anonymising him.

The memorial was unveiled at a public ceremony on 6 November 1920. Shortly afterwards, concerns emerged that the list of names on the cenotaph was incomplete. After a newspaper campaign, more than 200 further names were identified and these were eventually added to the cenotaph. The names of most Jewish casualties were omitted, the Jewish community being unhappy that the memorial featured a Christian cross. By the beginning of the 21st century, the engravings on the memorial had deteriorated noticeably. Rather than re-cut them and damage the stonework, they were supplemented by a series of glass panels that bear all the names from the cenotaph, as well as names from the Second World War and later conflicts. The panels were unveiled in 2011. The memorial is a Grade I listed building, having been upgraded in 2015 when Lutyens's war memorials were declared a national collection. (Full article...)

The Gevninge helmet fragment is the dexter eyepiece of a helmet from the Viking Age or end of the Nordic Iron Age. It was found in 2000 during the excavation of a Viking farmstead in Gevninge, near Lejre, Denmark. The fragment is moulded from bronze and gilded, and consists of a stylised eyebrow with eyelashes above an oval opening. There are three holes at the top and bottom of the fragment to affix the eyepiece to a helmet. The fragment is significant as rare evidence of contemporaneous helmets, and also for its discovery in Gevninge, an outpost that is possibly connected to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It has been in the collection of the Lejre Museum since its discovery, and has been exhibited internationally as part of a travelling exhibition on Vikings.

The fragment is an ornate piece, but nothing else remains of the helmet; it might be the single remnant of a disintegrated helmet, or it might have been lost or discarded. It is one of two Scandinavian eyepieces discovered alone, giving rise to the suggestion that it was intentionally deposited in an invocation of the one-eyed god Odin. It would have been part of a decorated "crested helmet", the type of headgear that was common to England and Scandinavia from the sixth through eleventh centuries AD. These are particularly known from the examples found at Vendel, Valsgärde, and Sutton Hoo; the Tjele helmet fragment is the only other Danish example known. (Full article...)

USS Constellation vs La Vengeance, or the action of 1 February 1800, was a single-ship action fought between frigates of the French Navy and the United States Navy during the Quasi-War. In the battle the American frigate USS Constellation tried to take the French frigate La Vengeance as a prize. Both ships were heavily damaged. Although the French frigate struck her colors (surrendered) twice, she managed to flee only after the main mast of her opponent had fallen.

In 1798, an undeclared war had begun between the United States and France due to French seizures of American merchantmen. As part of an American effort to deter French attacks, Commodore Thomas Truxton led an American naval squadron that was dispatched to the Lesser Antilles. Learning that regular French naval forces were in the region, Truxton set out in his flagship Constellation and sailed to Guadeloupe to engage them. On 1 February 1800, while nearing the French colony, Constellation met François Marie Pitot's frigate La Vengeance of the French Navy. Despite Pitot's attempts to flee, his frigate was drawn into a heavy engagement with Constellation. Although the French frigate struck her colors twice, Constellation was unable to take La Vengeance as a prize. Eventually Pitot was able to escape with his frigate to Curaçao, though only after sustaining severe casualties and damage to his vessel. Truxton's ship sustained serious damage and sailed to Jamaica for repairs before returning home to a hero's welcome. (Full article...)

The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa. After immense materiel and human losses on both sides, the Carthaginians were once again defeated. Macedonia, Syracuse and several Numidian kingdoms were drawn into the fighting, and Iberian and Gallic forces fought on both sides. There were three main military theatres during the war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia and Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success before moving into Italy; and Africa, where Rome finally won the war.

The First Punic War had ended in a Roman victory in 241 BC after 23 years and enormous losses on both sides. After the war Carthage expanded its holdings in Iberia where in 219 BC a Carthaginian army under Hannibal besieged, captured and sacked the pro-Roman city of Saguntum. In spring 218 BC Rome declared war on Carthage, beginning the Second Punic War. Later that year, Hannibal surprised the Romans by marching his army overland from Iberia, through Gaul and over the Alps to Cisalpine Gaul (modern northern Italy). Reinforced by Gallic allies he obtained crushing victories over the Romans at the battles of Trebia (218) and Lake Trasimene (217). Moving to southern Italy in 216 Hannibal defeated the Romans again at the battle of Cannae, where he annihilated the largest army the Romans had ever assembled. After the death or capture of more than 120,000 Roman troops in less than three years, many of Rome's Italian allies, notably Capua, defected to Carthage, giving Hannibal control over much of southern Italy. As Syracuse and Macedonia joined the Carthaginian side after Cannae, the conflict spread. Between 215 and 210 BC the Carthaginians attempted to capture Roman-held Sicily and Sardinia, but were unsuccessful. The Romans took drastic steps to raise new legions: enrolling slaves, criminals and those who did not meet the usual property qualification; this vastly increased the number of men they had under arms. For the next decade the war in southern Italy continued, with Roman armies slowly recapturing most of the Italian cities that had joined Carthage. (Full article...)

Major General Rupert Major Downes (10 February 1885 – 5 March 1945) was an Australian soldier, surgeon and historian.

The son of British Army officer Major Francis Downes, Downes joined the Australian Army as a trumpeter while he was still at school. He attended the University of Melbourne, graduating with his medical degrees in 1907 and a Doctor of Medicine degree in 1911. He was commissioned as a captain in the Australian Army Medical Corps in 1908, and after the outbreak of World War I he joined the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in 1914 as its youngest lieutenant colonel. He served in the Gallipoli campaign, and was appointed Assistant Director of Medical Services (ADMS) of the newly formed Anzac Mounted Division in 1916, which he combined with the post of ADMS AIF Egypt. In 1917, he became Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) of the Desert Mounted Corps. After the war, he wrote articles on medical aspects of the Sinai and Palestine campaign, and the section on the campaign for the Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918. (Full article...)

Septimius Odaenathus (Palmyrene Aramaic: 𐡠𐡣𐡩𐡮𐡶‎, romanized: ʾŌdaynaṯ; Arabic: أذينة‎, romanized: Uḏayna; c. 220 – 267) was the founding Arab king (malik) of the Palmyrene Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He elevated the status of his kingdom from a regional center subordinate to Rome into a formidable state in South-West Asia. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s under the Severan Dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he became the lord (ras) of the city, a position created for him, as early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a consularis, indicating a high status in the Roman Empire.

The defeat and captivity of Emperor Valerian at the hands of the Sasanian emperor Shapur I in 260 left the eastern Roman provinces largely at the mercy of the Persians. Odaenathus remained on the side of Rome; assuming the title of king, he led the Palmyrene army, attacking the Persians before they could cross the Euphrates to the eastern bank, inflicting a considerable defeat. He took the side of Emperor Gallienus, the son and successor of Valerian, who was facing the attempted usurpation of Fulvius Macrianus. The rebel declared his sons emperors, leaving one in Syria and taking the other with him to Europe. Odaenathus attacked the remaining usurper and quelled the rebellion. He was rewarded with many exceptional titles by the Emperor, who formalized his self-established position in the East. In reality, the Emperor may have done little but accept the declared nominal loyalty of Odaenathus. (Full article...)

The Second War of Scottish Independence broke out in 1332, when Edward Balliol led an English-backed invasion of Scotland. Balliol, the son of former Scottish king John Balliol, was attempting to make good his claim to the Scottish throne. He was opposed by Scots loyal to the occupant of the throne, eight-year-old David II. At the Battle of Dupplin Moor Balliol's force defeated a Scottish army ten times their size and Balliol was crowned king. Within three months David's partisans had regrouped and forced Balliol out of Scotland. He appealed to the English king, Edward III, who invaded Scotland in 1333 and besieged the important trading town of Berwick. A large Scottish army attempted to relieve it but was heavily defeated at the Battle of Halidon Hill. Balliol established his authority over most of Scotland, ceded to England the eight counties of south-east Scotland and did homage to Edward for the rest of the country as a fief.

As allies of Scotland via the Auld Alliance, the French were unhappy about an English expansion into Scotland and so covertly supported and financed David's loyalists. Balliol's allies fell out among themselves and he lost control of most of Scotland again by late 1334. In early 1335, the French attempted to broker a peace. However, the Scots were unable to agree on a position and Edward prevaricated while building a large army. He invaded in July and again overran most of Scotland. Tensions with France increased. Further French-sponsored peace talks failed in 1336; in May 1337, King Philip VI of France engineered a clear break between France and England, starting the Hundred Years' War. The Anglo-Scottish war became a subsidiary theatre of this larger Anglo-French war. Edward sent what troops he could spare to Scotland, in spite of which the English slowly lost ground in Scotland as they were forced to focus on the French theatre. Achieving his majority, David returned to Scotland from France in 1341; by 1342, the English had been cleared from north of the border. (Full article...)

HMS Argus was a British aircraft carrier that served in the Royal Navy from 1918 to 1944. She was converted from an ocean liner that was under construction when the First World War began and became the first aircraft carrier with a full-length flight deck that allowed wheeled aircraft to take off and land. After commissioning, the ship was involved for several years in the development of the optimum design for other aircraft carriers. Argus also evaluated various types of arresting gear, general procedures needed to operate a number of aircraft in concert and fleet tactics. The ship was too top-heavy as originally built, and had to be modified to improve her stability in the mid-1920s. She spent one brief deployment on the China Station in the late 1920s before being placed in reserve for budgetary reasons.

Argus was recommissioned and partially modernised shortly before the Second World War and served as a training ship for deck-landing practice until June 1940. The following month she made the first of her many ferry trips to the Western Mediterranean to fly off fighters to Malta; she was largely occupied in this task for the next two years. The ship also delivered aircraft to Murmansk, Russia, Takoradi in the Gold Coast, and Reykjavík, Iceland. By 1942, the Royal Navy was very short of aircraft carriers, and Argus was pressed into front-line service despite her lack of speed and armament. In June, she participated in Operation Harpoon, providing air cover for the Malta-bound convoy. In November, the ship provided air cover during Operation Torch, the invasion of French North Africa, and was slightly damaged by a bomb. After returning to the UK for repairs, Argus was used again for deck-landing practice until late September 1944. In December, she became an accommodation ship, and was listed for disposal in mid-1946. The ship was sold in late 1946 and scrapped the following year. (Full article...)

The first USS Undine was a sternwheel steamer and tinclad warship that served with both the Union and Confederate forces during the American Civil War. Built in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Ben Gaylord for civilian trade on the Ohio River, the ship was purchased by the Navy in March 1864 and renamed. Converted to a tinclad (a type of lightly-armored vessel used on inland rivers during the war) and commissioned the following month, Undine originally served on the Mississippi River before being transferred to the Tennessee River. In July 1864, the vessel sank after hitting a snag (submerged tree) near Clifton, Tennessee, but was refloated a week later. Undine was then involved in an operation at Eastport, Mississippi, on October 10.

While responding to the sound of a fight between Nathan Bedford Forrest's Confederate cavalry raiders and a transport on October 30, Undine was damaged and surrendered to Forrest's troops. Taken into Confederate service, Undine participated in Forrest's movement against the Union supply depot at Johnsonville, Tennessee. With Undine caught between two Union naval forces, the Confederates burned the captured tinclad on November 4. What is left of Undine lies beneath Kentucky Lake. (Full article...)

Macedonia (/ˌmæsɪˈdoʊniə/ ^ⓘ MASS-ih-DOH-nee-ə; Greek: Μακεδονία, Makedonía), also called Macedon (/ˈmæsɪdɒn/ MASS-ih-don), was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, which later became the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal Argead dynasty, which was followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, the earliest kingdom was centred on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, and bordered by Epirus to the southwest, Illyria to the northwest, Paeonia to the north, Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south.

Before the 4th century BC, Macedonia was a small kingdom with its capital at Aigai, outside of the area dominated by the great city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and briefly subordinate to the Achaemenid Empire. During the reign of the Argead king Philip II (359–336 BC), Macedonia with its capital at Pella, subdued mainland Greece and the Thracian Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy. With a reformed army containing phalanxes wielding the sarissa pike, Philip II defeated the old powers of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Philip II's son Alexander the Great, leading a federation of Greek states, accomplished his father's objective of commanding the whole of Greece when he destroyed Thebes after the city revolted. During Alexander's subsequent campaign of conquest, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered territory that stretched as far as the Indus River. For a brief period, his Macedonian Empire was the most powerful in the world – the definitive Hellenistic state, inaugurating the transition to a new period of Ancient Greek civilization. Greek arts and literature flourished in the new conquered lands and advances in philosophy, engineering, and science spread across the empire and beyond. Of particular importance were the contributions of Aristotle, tutor to Alexander, whose writings became a keystone of Western philosophy. (Full article...)

SMS Schlesien was one of five Deutschland-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) between 1904 and 1906. Named after the German province of Silesia, Schlesien was laid down at the Schichau-Werke shipyard in Danzig on 19 November 1904, launched on 28 May 1906, and commissioned on 5 May 1908. She was armed with a battery of four 28 cm (11 in) guns and had a top speed of 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). The ships of her class were already outdated by the time they entered service, as they were inferior in size, armor, firepower, and speed to the revolutionary new British battleship HMS Dreadnought.

After commissioning, Schlesien was assigned to I Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, later being transferred to II Battle Squadron. She was primarily occupied with training cruises and fleet maneuvers in her early career. She served with the fleet throughout the first two years of World War I, seeing action at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916, where she was briefly actively engaged in combat. After Jutland, the Imperial Navy relegated Schlesien to guard duties before withdrawing her altogether in 1917, when she became a training ship. The Treaty of Versailles permitted the German navy to keep eight obsolete battleships, including Schlesien, to defend the German coast. Initially kept in reserve, she was modernized in the mid-1920s and saw extensive service with the reorganized Reichsmarine. (Full article...)

The Mantra-Rock Dance was a counterculture music event held on January 29, 1967, at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco. It was organized by followers of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) as an opportunity for its founder, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to address a wider public. It was also a promotional and fundraising effort for their first center on the West Coast of the United States.

The Mantra-Rock Dance featured some of the most prominent Californian rock groups of the time, such as the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin, as well as the then relatively unknown Moby Grape. The bands agreed to appear with Prabhupada and to perform for free; the proceeds were donated to the local Hare Krishna temple. The participation of countercultural leaders considerably boosted the event's popularity; among them were the poet Allen Ginsberg, who led the singing of the Hare Krishna mantra onstage along with Prabhupada, and the LSD promoters Timothy Leary and Augustus Owsley Stanley III. (Full article...)