Dynamic Directory - May 19, 2025

Robert Leckie and other U.S. Marines fight the Japanese during the Battle of Guadalcanal. It is a fearsome time for such young men.

Exactly eight months to the day, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, 11,000 American Marines land on a Pacific island called Guadalcanal. They are about to commence the first Allied offensive against the Empire of Japan.

This image depicts Philip Johnston visiting members of the Navajo Nation at their hogan.

General Saito, commanding Japanese forces on the island of Saipan, believed his troops could not hold the island if they did not have air power over it.

As U.S. infantry troops took their positions on the 6th of July, 1944, they were unaware that opposing forces were about to engage in a mass attack, using their own bodies as weapons.

Lt. General Holland Smith - pictured here, second-from-left and known to the men on Saipan as "Howlin' Mad" - was extremely proud of "my Marines.

After the war was over, and Robert Leckie returned from his tour of duty in the Pacific, he married Vera Keller.

Thomas Hobbes, a British philosopher who was born in "the philosophy town" of Malmesbury, in 1588 (during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I), believed that if people live "in a state of nature," they would be fearful and prone to violence.

Embedded with American forces on Saipan, W.

Gudea was a Prince of Lagash who lived during the troubled period following the end of the reign of Naram-Sin (who had led the Akkadian Empire to its zenith).

Virginia Clemm - a first-cousin to Edgar Allan Poe - became his wife in the spring of 1836.

A pillory was a place where individuals who were punished for various crimes could be at risk for more than public humiliation.

Edgar Allan Poe published a poem entitled "Imitation," in 1827.

Susa, an important city in the ancient world (when it was the capital of Elam), is located in Iran. It is one of the oldest, continuously inhabited cities of the world.

Colonel Benjamin Oliver Davis, Jr.

Lt. Gwynne Pierson was one of four Tuskegee Airmen who participated in a major attack on a German vessel during the summer of 1944.

In the 12th century, the King of England was vexed by Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Anne Hutchinson - and some of her children - died unfortunate deaths of mistaken identity in the summer of 1643.