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"All across the South, the segregation wall is cracking. The hammer is being wielded by the courts... The executive branch is also moving into the civil rights field."


The DUKWs of W.W. II (Yank Magazine, 1944)

The American Army's amphibious vehicles called the DUKWs (Ducks) were first manufactured by General Motors in 1942 and were issued to both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. 2,000 were shipped to the British, over five hundred found their way to the Australian military and 535 were passed along to the Soviet Army. They have earned their sea legs a thousand times over and have even ventured across the English Channel.

The attached YANK MAGAZINE article was one of the first articles to have ever been written about them, and quite ironically plays-down the revolutionary nature of the invention:

"Japs realize the value of the DUCKs. They once issued a communique saying their bombers sank 'one 5,000-ton ship and one amphibious truck".


The Myth of Lee's Sword (Confederate Veteran, 1922)

Responding to the old tale that General Lee offered his sword in surrender at Appomattox, and that the magnanimous General Grant, flush with victory, kindly refused this gesture of humiliation - this anonymous contributor to "Confederate Veteran Magazine" penned an article that exposes the old saw to be incorrect:

"And General Grant says specifically in his memoir (Volume II, Chapter 25, pages 344-346): 'No conversation, not one word, passed between General Lee and myself either about private property, side arms, or kindred subjects. The much talked of surrendering of General Lee's sword and my handing it back, this and much more that has been said about it, is pure romance.'"


The BMW Motorcycle Examined (Yank Magazine, 1944)

All global tensions aside, the U.S. Army could not find any faults at all with the motorcycles that BMW was making for Adolf Hitler during World War II. After having spent much time testing and re-testing the thing, they reluctantly concluded, "This is as good as any motorcycle in the world" (it was probably a bit better...).

Click here to read about the firm belief held by the German Army concerning the use of motorcycles in modern war.

50,000 Klansmen March in Washington, D.C. (Literary Digest, 1925)

A report on the August, 1925 KKK march in Washington, D.C.:
"The parade itself marshaled 'from 50,000 to 60,000 white-robed men and women' as the correspondent of the The New York 'Times' estimates, and H.L. Mencken tells us in the New York 'Sun'":

"The Klan put it all over its enemies. The parade was grander and gaudier, by far than anything the wizards had prophesied. It was longer, it was thicker, it was higher in tone. I stood in front of the treasury for two hours watching the legions pass. They marched in lines of eighteen or twenty, solidly shoulder to shoulder. I retired for refreshment and was gone an hour. When I got back Pennsylvania Avenue was still a mass of white from the Treasury down to the foot of Capitol Hill - a full mile of Klansmen..."

Click here to learn about the origins of the term "Jim Crow".

Skiiers Discover Aspen (Collier's Magazine, 1948)

A late Forties travel article that simultaneously announced the end of Aspen, Colorado, as a ghost town and the beginning of it's reign as a ski resort of the first order.

"Aspen is a tiny Colorado village tucked away in one corner of a lush green valley ringed by snow-capped peaks rising to altitudes of more than 14,000 feet..."


'Porgy & Bess' (Stage Magazine, 1935)

Music critic and scholar Isaac Goldberg (1887 - 1938) reviewed the opening performance of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" for the editors of STAGE MAGAZINE:

"Why the Jew of the North should, in time, take up the song of the Southern Negro and fuse into a typically American product is an involved question. Perhaps, underneath the jazz rhythms and the general unconventionality of musical process lies the common history of an oppressed minority, and an ultimately Oriental origin. In any case, the human focus of this particular type of musical Americanism has been, from the very first notes, George Gershwin."


The Blowtorch Blonde (Coronet Magazine, 1952)

This is a six page article about the legendary Marilyn Monroe (né Norma Jeane Mortenson: 1926 – 1962), her painful beginnings, the cheesecake pictures, the bit-parts and her enormous popularity as a star are all woven into a narrative that never lets the reader forget that her unique type of appeal was something entirely new.


The Book Burnings (Literary Digest, 1933)

"Numbers hardly count in estimating the book-burning festival in Germany on May 10 [1933]....Reports range from an estimate of hundreds to tens of thousands of books burned."

American columnist Walter Lippmann of the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE wrote:

"They symbolize the moral and intellectual character of the Nazi regime. For these bonfires are not the work of schoolboys or mobs but of the present German Government acting through its Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment."

CLICK HERE to read an article from 1923 about the abitious Adolf Hitler.

Read about the American reporter who became a Nazi...