Dynamic Directory - July 16, 2025

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Embedded with American forces on Saipan, W.

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

Major Henry Reed Rathbone and his fiancé, Clara Harris, attended a play with Abraham and Mary Lincoln on the night the President was shot. Booth lunged at Rathbone with a knife, injuring but not killing him. Learn how the assassination claimed more victims, years later, when Rathbone himself lost his mind.

Learn the story behind one of the most-famous photos of the U-boat War: The attack of U-569.

As Alan Turing and his Bletchly Park colleagues worked feverishly to break the Enigma code, they caught a break when the Royal Navy captured U-110 on May 9, 1941. Onboard was a working Enigma machine and secret codes for the following month. Initially towing the disabled U-boat to Iceland, the crew with the secret treasure was redirected to Scotland.

Oliver Wendell Holmes is known for some of his free-speech decisions which he wrote while serving as a Supreme Court Justice.

Before he became a pope, Giuseppe Sarto had a great deal of experience living among his parishoners. As Pope Pius X, he strongly opposed the outbreak of WWI.

Before the Pearl Harbor bombing, Japanese-Americans lived and worked on Terminal Island. After the bombing, their homes were destroyed and their way of life was gone forever.

Ansel Adams, one of America's greatest photographers, started his professional life as a pianist. What made him decide to switch profressions?

Professor Wiles has won the Abel Prize for solving Fermat's Last Theorem. How long did it take to solve it? How did he do it?

On January 6, 1838, Samuel Morse successfully tests an electrical telegraph. So why did it take years longer to send the first message?