901 The Battle of Ligny

Ligny would be the last victory Napoleon would have. Fought in 1815, with Qautre Bras it would be the prelude to Waterloo two days later, but the failure to seize an absolute victory over the Prussians left much of their army intact to fight again a few days later, with devastating consequences.

902 Baden-Powell & Mafeking

Colonel Robert Baden-Powell issued a proclamation to the small town of Mafeking on the 12th of October 1899 announcing the outbreak of the Boer War, the next day the town would be under siege. For 217 days they would hold out until relieved. Baden-Powell would return home a national hero, Mafeking being an early rare success in a string of disasters for the British against the Boers, a few years later he would take some of the ideas he had been developing in his overseas postings and transfer them to a new movement, the Scouts, possibly the most successful youth movement ever.

903 The Aircraft Carrier

1903 saw the birth of fixed-wing aircraft. In January of 1912 Lieutenant Charles Samson flew a Shorts S27 biplane off a platform constructed on the stationary battleship H.M.S Africa. Just four months later, and Samson flew a plane of a moving ship, Hibernia, during the Royal Fleet Review at Weymouth. The development of naval air power had begun…the aircraft carrier was born.

904 Medieval Warfare

Medieval Europe saw an array of wars and battles fought for a plethora of reasons; defensive wars fought against invading vikings or Ottoman Turks; wars of expansion such as the invasion of Britain in 1066; then of course there were the great Crusades for Christendom. At the other end of the scale there were rebellions of peasants against nobles; nobles against their Lord, Barons against their King; the eruption of violence for one reason or another was fairly common, but how was this waged?

905 The Pacific: From Pearl Harbor to Midway

On the morning of 7th of December 1941 the Japanese launched Operation Z, the surprise attack on the American Naval base of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. This was the start of the War in the Pacific. Like a typhoon Imperial Japanese forces were unleashed across the Pacific and for almost six months had victory after victory. Hong Kong, Singapore, Guam, the Philippines, Burma all would fall, the Japanese had swept across the Pacific knocking on the doors of both Australia and India, even the American presence in the Pacific would be under threat.

906 Clausewitz

907 Howitzer

908 Carthage

909 Genghis Khan & The Mongols

910 The Battle of Quebec, 1759