Lt. Jim Downing was on shore on Oahu when it happened. 

“The Japanese planes were painted olive drab, the same as our Army planes,” he recalled. “It was not unusual to see Army planes flying around. So it was a great surprise when the first planes we saw were dropping torpedoes and bombs and strafing with machine guns.”

Here for fun is the syllabus of a college course that might be taught in 40 years:

History 210 / Professor Nivram

The Crisis of the 21st Century is a commonly applied name for the almost-collapse of the United States in recent decades. Students who took my classical history course last year and read about Diocletian will note the resemblances to the Crisis of the Third Century in the Roman Empire.

LONDON—It is an old debating point: Do the times make the man, or does the man make the times? In the case of Winston Churchill, whose death 50 years ago Saturday the British are remembering with more than nostalgia, it is both.

The times in Churchill’s case were both World War I, in which he served as a battalion commander, and World War II, which he helped win for Britain and America. By the standard he set, all political leaders since—with the possible exception of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan—are mere pygmies. Yet, even they pale in his shadow.

Archeologists have discovered what they believe to be Herod’s palace and the much-debated site where Jesus’ trial took place.

Two hundred years ago today, on January 8, 1815, the Battle of New Orleans ended with dramatic casualty numbers: 71 Americans vs. 2,042 British soldiers. You may know the basics, but probably never heard about the importance of U.S. Gen. Andrew Jackson’s beliefs.

One hundred years ago this month, millions of Europeans got a foretaste of quasi-hell, and some saw a moment of quasi-heaven. 

Former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw first dubbed World War II–era Americans “The Greatest Generation” in his 1998 book by the same name. “It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced,” he wrote.

I saw this firsthand when I interviewed several Pearl Harbor veterans for a feature in the current issue of WORLD Magazine. They told me about losing friends and loved ones at war, decades of public service, and marriages that lasted a lifetime.