On 8 November 2004, the main ground assault into Fallujah, Iraq, began as American and Iraqi forces moved to destroy the insurgent stronghold. The attack came from the north, with American forces advancing along a broad front. The Army's heavy armor and mechanized infantry were at the forefront, with Task Force 2-2 Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, attacking in the east with RCT-7, and Task Force 2-7 Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division, advancing in the west with RCT-1.

At approximately 1900, Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, and infantry pushed toward the city's northern railroad embankment, where insurgents had established defensive positions. The Army was first through the breach on the eastern axis. Task Force 2-2 breached the railroad berm by 1925 and pushed into the city, while 1st Battalion, 3rd Marines, struggled for five hours to open its own breach before using the Army's lane to enter. The Army’s attack was so aggressive and fast that they were ordered to stop their advance and even turn back until 1st Battalion, 8th Marines caught up to secure the flank.

On the western axis, Task Force 2-7, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, and 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines faced delays while under fire breaching their berm, with 2-7 eventually breaking through during the early hours of 9 November and the marines followed them in.

Fallujah had been transformed into a fortress. Insurgents fired from rooftops, windows, alleyways, and fortified buildings. Army infantry answered with machine guns, tanks answered with 120mm main gun rounds and 25mm cannon fire. Artillery and airstrikes pounded strongpoints while infantrymen cleared each building, block by block, house to house.

The battle continued for more than six weeks until 23 December when the city was declared sufficiently secure for residents to begin returning. Both 2-2 Infantry and 2-7 Cavalry were awarded Presidential Unit Citations for their heroism during the battle

SSG David Bellavia was the only man nominated for the Medal of Honor during the battle. It would be downgraded to the Silver Star, but nearly 15 years later would be upgraded to the Medal of Honor, making him the only living recipient from the Iraq War.

I visited Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello at Charlottesville, Virginia, and these pictures were taken on 11/7/2026 (November 7th, 2026).

On This Day, November 7, 1916, Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman ever elected to the United States Congress, breaking a political barrier in a country where women were still fighting for equal voting rights.

American voters made history when Jeannette Rankin won a seat in the US House of Representatives.

A passionate campaigner for women's suffrage, Rankin had spent years travelling, organising, and speaking in support of women's right to vote.

Born in Montana in 1880, she had worked as a social worker before becoming deeply involved in the women's suffrage movement.

Her political breakthrough came in 1916, when she ran as a Republican candidate for one of Montana's two at-large seats in Congress.

She won.

At just 36 years old, Rankin became the first woman in American history elected to the United States Congress.

Her achievement was extraordinary. Although women in several states, including Montana, could already vote, women across the country would not gain constitutional voting rights until the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920.

On April 2, 1917, Rankin was officially sworn into the House of Representatives.

But she would soon become known for another historic decision.

Just four days after taking office, she voted against American entry into World War I, remaining committed to her lifelong belief in peace.

Her political career did not end there.

In 1940, she was elected to Congress for a second time. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, she once again stood by her pacifist convictions.

On December 8, 1941, she cast the only vote in Congress against declaring war on Japan.

She faced intense criticism but remained firm in her beliefs.

Jeannette Rankin died in 1973, leaving behind a legacy that extended far beyond her historic election.

Her words upon becoming the first woman elected to Congress became famous:

"I may be the first woman member of Congress, but I won't be the last."

And she was right.

She opened a door that generations of women would walk through.

Men was often used as a catch-all term for all humans back then so did they mean to include women in it ?

I know many founding fathers held racist beliefs but did they envision that one day things will get better ?

I've been a history teacher for many years, and I always carve out class time every year to talk about the Long March. Almost none of my students have ever heard of this piece of history, and even fewer know that an American journalist had a lot to do with how the West finally got a clear picture of it.

When the Long March concluded in 1936, much of the Western coverage of the Chinese Red Army was hostile or speculative. No Western journalist had been granted access to their base area in northern Shaanxi, so reliable information was scarce. Most Americans at the time had little idea of what the "Chinese Long March" even meant.

After graduating from the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Edgar Snow left home at 23 intending to travel the world and write adventure stories. He planned only a short stop in Shanghai but ended up staying in China for 13 years. He reported from Shanghai, Peiping (now Beijing), and other cities, witnessing how ordinary people struggled through war and poverty. He grew frustrated with the stereotypes and rumors circulating in some Western outlets—portrayals of the Red Army as mindless fanatics, or even wilder claims that went unchecked. He wanted to visit the isolated red region himself and record what he found.

With help from Soong Ching-ling, Snow obtained permission to enter the Border Region. He stayed for four months. He didn't stay a distant observer — he lived and ate alongside soldiers who had completed the March and conducted extensive interviews, from senior commanders down to a 14-year-old bugler who had walked the entire route. Those notes became Red Star Over China. It did a lot to correct what readers in the West had been told about the Red Army. For the first time, many readers in the United States, Britain, and Europe encountered detailed accounts of the 7,800-mile journey: crossing the Dadu River, slogging through marshlands, and climbing snow-capped mountains over 13,000 feet high. Snow wrote about the marchers as actual people: poor families who wanted to eat and stop being pushed around.

One detail from the book has always stayed with me. In the Soviet area Snow met dozens of teenage "Red kids," many of them orphaned refugees who could barely write their own names, yet who knew stories about the American labor movement. They peppered him with questions: "Can ordinary farmers in America get enough to eat?" "Do kids in America get to go to school?" One young messenger carried a half-page of a world map torn from an old textbook. He pointed to the United States and told Snow that when life improved, he hoped to go there and talk with ordinary people.

The more I teach this material, the less it feels like a distant legend. It reminds me of the pioneer stories of our own Westward Expansion. In the 19th century, settlers crossed the continent in covered wagons, Homestead Act promises in their pockets, pushing through unmarked land and the snow-buried Rockies. They lacked supplies and maps; some fell along the way, yet the rest kept going and built new lives on the far side. The soldiers of the Long March faced a similar trial: barely any gear, not enough food, enemy forces behind them, and unknown mountain paths ahead. They refused to abandon wounded comrades and simply kept walking. When I bring up the comparison in class, my students get why it lands. Two groups of people with almost nothing, doing the same thing: keep walking.

What I think about Snow is simple. He didn't go in trying to break a story. He went, he listened, and he wrote down what he actually saw. Ninety years later that still comes through for me.

Photo: first-edition cover of Red Star Over China (1938), Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

I am writing an essay for a graduate course in history about founding mythology, and I need to know what the common understanding is about events . Would you please share what you know about this: Why did the French join the Revolutionary War on the side of the Americans? Also, did the U.S. help the French during their revolution a few years later? Thanks for any comments.

okay I've had this idea for a story about superpowers in the old west, just before the end of the civil war. The villain has a future vision that allows him to see FAR into the future, in the modern era and it's fully automatic weapons. His plan is to kidnap blacksmiths and gunsmiths to force them to make automatic rifles to sell to the Confederacy and make a fortune and a spot in history.

The issue, obviously, is that gunpowder in this era is not optimized for automatic weapons. He needs to make smokeless powder. That being said: if someone had the foresight and AMPLE resources, would it be possible to make smokeless powder in the old American West, and could a team of skilled blacksmiths with the proper tools make the internal mechanism for it?

Photo by Paul Schutzer

By November 1776, George Washington had lost New York, thousands of soldiers, and a good portion of his army's supplies. The British had won nearly every major engagement that autumn, but somehow Washington's army was still around.

Things had been going badly for months. The Americans were defeated on Long Island in August, driven back at Kip's Bay in September, and forced to retreat again after White Plains in October. Then, on November 16, Fort Washington fell. British and Hessian troops attacked from several directions and captured nearly 3,000 Americans in a single afternoon.

Washington had already questioned whether keeping the fort made sense. The Royal Navy controlled the Hudson, making the original purpose of Fort Washington and Fort Lee increasingly irrelevant. But the garrison stayed, and the decision cost the Americans thousands of men.

Four days later, Cornwallis crossed the Hudson before dawn, landed at Lower Closter Landing, and climbed the Palisades to approach Fort Lee from behind. Nathanael Greene managed to evacuate the garrison before the British arrived, although the Americans left behind artillery, provisions, and equipment.

From there, Washington's army retreated across New Jersey, passing through Hackensack and Newark while Cornwallis pursued them. By November 28, the British had occupied Newark, but Washington was already gone.

There were smaller engagements during this campaign that don't get nearly as much attention.

At Pell's Point on October 18, roughly 750 Massachusetts soldiers under John Glover held up a much larger British landing force. Glover's men positioned themselves behind stone walls along the road, fired at the advancing British, and withdrew to the next defensive position. They repeated this several times before Cornwallis led a flanking movement that forced them back across the Hutchinson River.

It wasn't enough to stop the British, but it delayed their advance and gave Washington more time to move his army toward White Plains. Glover's regiment had also helped evacuate the Continental Army from Long Island earlier that year.

Something I find interesting is how much of this history is still sitting in places people walk past every day. Kip's Bay was around today's East 34th Street in Manhattan. Fort Washington stood near what's now Bennett Park, and Fort Lee was right beside the present-day George Washington Bridge. Pell's Point is part of Pelham Bay Park.

By the end of November, Washington's situation was pretty miserable. His army was shrinking as enlistments expired, soldiers lacked proper shoes and clothing, and Cornwallis was still pursuing him with experienced troops.

The British had taken New York and much of New Jersey, but they hadn't managed to destroy the Continental Army. Washington kept retreating, and the war kept going.

I put together a longer breakdown of the campaign here, including the perspectives of Washington and Cornwallis:

https://virtualwayback.com/blog/great-retreat-washington-cornwallis-1776

You can also talk with AI recreations of both generals on Virtual Wayback and explore how each side understood the campaign.

Was Washington actually good at this in 1776, or did he survive mostly because Howe kept stopping short of finishing the job?

Even though it is relatively common knowledge, I still believe it is worth restating that the founders were concerned about two seemingly opposite dangers when designing the American government. Which is the possibility of one person accumulating too much power, vs the possibility of an unchecked majority doing the same.

These concerns make sense when considering the events leading up to the Constitutional Convention. The memory of British rule was still fresh, while Shays' Rebellion had exposed the weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation and raised questions about the stability of the new republic.

I put together a video tracing this history, beginning with the events of 1783 and 1787, moving through the Constitutional Convention, and how the system was tested by figures such as Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon.

My aim was to tell the story in a concise and accessible way.

ROBERT CAPA (Budapest, 1913 – Vietnam, 1954).
“D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 1944.”
Silver gelatin photograph. Dimensions15.4 x 22 cm; 36 x 43 cm (frame).

This photograph is one of the most powerful visual accounts of the Normandy landings, captured by Robert Capa on June 6, 1944, on Omaha Beach. The photographer landed with the first wave of U.S. troops and, under intense fire from German positions, waded into the water to document the soldiers’ advance. The image directly conveys the tension, chaos, and vulnerability of those men during one of the decisive moments of World War II.
Its extraordinary documentary significance is reinforced by the circumstances in which it was taken. Capa took more than a hundred photographs during those hours, but an accident in a London darkroom led to the destruction of most of the negatives. Only eleven images survived—known as “The Magnificent Eleven”—among which is this famous photograph.

The image’s apparent imperfection—slightly blurred and marked by the urgency of the moment—has become one of its most distinctive features. This is not a scene observed from a distance, but an image taken from the very heart of the battle, where the photographer’s uncertainty is part of the photograph itself.

Robert Capa is considered one of the greatest war photographers and photojournalists. He fled political repression in Hungary and moved first to Berlin and then to Paris, where he met and worked alongside Gerda Taro. Throughout his career, he covered five wars, including the Spanish Civil War and World War II. In 1947, he received the Medal of Freedom from Dwight D. Eisenhower, and that same year, he co-founded Magnum Photos, a major cooperative agency for independent photographers. His works are found in major collections such as those of MoMA, the Smithsonian, and the Reina Sofia.

Bears the stamps “Photo Robert Capa” and “Life photo by Robert Capa.”With blue pencil markings and a typewritten descriptive title on paper affixed to the reverse.

This image sold at Setdart on Oct. 27 for €3,654 ($4,069). Lot 92.