This is the first ever publication of the recently discovered Grand Tour journal of Edward Geoffrey Stanley (1799-1869), future 14th earl of Derby and three-time prime minister. In 1820-22 Stanley travelled throughout northern and central Italy and the Swiss Alps, recording the insights and experiences that were to shape his character.
Savoy and its Alps were for seven centuries an independent state at the centre of Europe, separating France from the patchwork of principalities that made up Italy. Merchants, clerics, pilgrims, diplomats as well as privileged young Englishmen on the Grand Tour, regularly used the Alpine passes. But it was the need of European armies to cross ......
For 100 years, the world's oldest independent air force, the RAF, forged a distinguished record in military air operations from the First World War through to recent operations over Iraq and Syria. There is, however, a field of endeavour in which the Royal Air Force has excelled: selling its public image. Of the three armed services, the air force ......
On January 7, 1891, in the immediate aftermath to the assassination of Sitting Bull and the massacre at Wounded Knee Creek, an obscure Sioux Indian shot and killed one Lieutenant Casey in cold blood. This is the forgotten story of the civil trials of Plenty Horses for the murder of the last Whiteman to die in the Great Plains War, trials that ......
Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and survived the Nazi and Russian occupations. Disliking communism, he hijacked a plane and escaped. He worked for the CIA and befriended Bill Boeing Jr. When Boeing began racing hydroplanes Mira became Bill's driver, winning many races. He then switched to airplanes and continued to win!
For a ten-year-old, with explosions all about him and with the world seeming to be burning the war made a vivid impression. His Westphalian village consisted largely of traditional homesteads built of wattle and daub. The U.S. Third Army lit up the village with phosphor grenades from several mountains away. The world seemed to be coming to an end.
Gunter Horst Beetz was born in Berlin in 1926. Growing up as part of a typical family-his father was a banker, his mother a housewife-he joined the Hitler Youth-somewhat against his wishes-and after a short period manning anti-aircraft guns in Berlin he ultimately found himself in Normandy, fighting the Allies, where he was captured in July ......
Completed in 1911, the Copper River Northwestern Railway allowed Alaska's mining industry to flourish. Copper and gold prospecting townships and camps spread rapidly in the following thirty years. Far-flung glacier-side bunkhouses and angling stations dotted the wild landscape, with workers coming from all around the world to seek their ......
Abandoned Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: California Revealed is an unforgettable nocturnal journey through secret locations hidden in the deserts of California. California has more than its share of abandoned planes, trains, and automobiles.
