On July 4, 1916, Gussie and Addie Van Buren set out from New York on two Indian Model F motorcycles. Though it was well before the creation of an interstate highway system, they reached San Francisco on September 2 and Southern California on September 8. [more inside]
posted by mudpuppie on Oct 23, 2009 - 17 comments

From the Prints & Photographs Division Library of Congress - browse through more than 1900 World War I posters. You can also search or look by subject heading. [via] [more inside]
posted by cashman on Oct 8, 2009 - 8 comments

World Wars 2, sequel to the hex-wargame-inspired World Wars, has been released. [more inside]
posted by XMLicious on Aug 9, 2009 - 24 comments

Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man, has died aged 113. [more inside]
posted by idiomatika on Jul 18, 2009 - 61 comments

Soldier's Mail: Letters Home from a New England Soldier, 1916-1919.
posted by Pater Aletheias on Jul 9, 2009 - 11 comments

Bonsoir, Monsieur COK!
Dans un formidable élan de générosité notre patron adoré nous offre enfin la possibilité de voir son FILM sur la toile!
A short film about efficiencies in bomb manufacturing.
posted by boo_radley on Jun 15, 2009 - 16 comments

The Department of Veterans Affairs has reported that military scientists tested hundreds of chemical and biological substances on them, including VX, tabun, soman, sarin, cyanide, LSD, PCP, and World War I-era blister agents like phosgene and mustard. The full scope of the tests, however, may never be known. As a CIA official explained to the GAO, referring to the agency's infamous MKULTRA mind-control experiments, "The names of those involved in the tests are not available because names were not recorded or the records were subsequently destroyed." Besides, said the official, some of the tests involving LSD and other psychochemical drugs "were administered to an undetermined number of people without their knowledge."
posted by Joe Beese on May 19, 2009 - 42 comments

As the national debt is monetized we may revive that phrase "you needed a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread." Notgeld, German for "Emergency Money" or "necessity money." 896 beautiful examples.
posted by wallstreet1929 on Feb 15, 2009 - 22 comments

The Vimy Ridge Memorial is a common destination for Canadian travellers in France. As previous visitors have discovered, however, it is not the easiest place to reach once you get off the train. Thankfully, there's been help in the form of the Welcome Man (Windows Media embedded video --clip starts at 11:30). Over the last 13 years Georges Devloo has met the train at Vimy every day, where he offers free transportation to the memorial to confused and lost Canadians seeking to pay their respects. In this time, it's been estimated that M. Devloo has given rides other assistance to over 1,200 Canadians. Today, we said au-revoir to "le grand-père de Vimy".
posted by aclevername on Feb 10, 2009 - 25 comments

It wasn't a Merry Christmas A few years ago while visiting friends in Germany, we made a trek to Verdun, France. As an American, I had no clue as to what was there other than it was an old city dating to the (Pre)- Roman era.
I was shocked and humbled to what I saw. The greatest battle (possibly in the history of modern warfare) was at the very place I was walking. [more inside]
posted by shockingbluamp on Dec 2, 2008 - 45 comments

The Great War Archive goes live today (November 11), the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. Launched by the University of Oxford in March 2008, the initiative invited members of the general public to submit digital photographs, audio, film, documents, and stories that originated from the Great War. Although the dealine for submissions is past, photos can still be added to the project's Flickr group.
posted by Abiezer on Nov 10, 2008 - 19 comments

Official WWI artist, chaos magician.
posted by internationalfeel on Nov 8, 2008 - 6 comments

Warfare: 1917 gives you a taste of the trenches.
posted by chuckdarwin on Oct 21, 2008 - 47 comments

Gallipoli is one of the most famous battles of World War I. Fought in on a Turkish peninsula in 1915 it was, like most Great War battles, a huge waste of life and largely fruitless. Jul Snelder's site has a wealth of information, the causes, history and aftermath of Gallipoli, the slang of the ANZAC forces, placenames in both English and Turkish, interesting little factoids, how Allied troops used subterfuge to hide their evacuation, the Turkish perspective, pictures of the battlesite today juxtaposed with old photographs, a mini-travel guide to Gallipoli and much more. One of the most famous units at Gallipoli was the Australian 12th Light Horse Regiment. To learn more about this type of unit, responsible for the "last successful great cavalry charge" two years after Gallipoli, I direct you to the excellent website of the Australian Light Horse Association, where you can learn anything you might reasonably want to know about the subject.
posted by Kattullus on Sep 15, 2008 - 82 comments

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 6, 2008 - 25 comments

Billy Hughes at War ― As Australia’s prime minister for most of the First World War, he steered the nation through the horrors of the war and the debates of the peace settlement. You can enter the conscription debate and examine political cartoons from the era. Billy Hughes provided Australia an independent voice on the world stage. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jul 1, 2008 - 8 comments

The Heritage of the Great War
posted by anastasiav on May 8, 2008 - 8 comments

Arthur Mole first developed his technique of collective portraiture in a religious context, photographing fellow church members gathered together in the shape of religious symbols. When the United States entered World War I, Mole and his colleague John Thomas turned to patriotic themes. They choreographed thousands of soldiers into formations such as the Liberty Bell and the Statue of Liberty. Their largest production was the U.S. Human Shield, photographed at Camp Custer, Battle Creek, Michigan, which comprised 30,000 men. Wiki. [more inside]
posted by ColdChef on Apr 24, 2008 - 10 comments

Famous, infamous, and interesting World War I draft cards, including The Bambino, Groucho, Moe, Satchmo, Scarface, and Sergeant York. [more inside]
posted by steef on Feb 12, 2008 - 20 comments

Crossing the Line a trailer for a short film by Peter Jackson. [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Oct 22, 2007 - 60 comments

The Faces of War, a fascinating document of the prosthetic masks used to cover serious facial injuries from the battlefield. Before plastic surgery was widely practised and used to reconstruct the horrific facial injuries of the First World War soldiers, men with the most serious facial injured were often hidden away from society.

Men such as those recorded in watercolour, and in pastels (warning: some may find these images disturbing); patients of Harold Gillies, pioneer of facial reconstruction at Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, the wars major centre for facial reconstruction and plastic surgery.
posted by chrisbucks on Oct 1, 2007 - 24 comments

Photos of WWI poison gas and flamethrowers. [more inside]
posted by damn dirty ape on Sep 14, 2007 - 44 comments

The story of Sgt Stubby of the 102nd Infantry, the most decorated dog of WWI, is an amazing tale. As a stray he wandered onto a troop barracks in the U.S. & was adopted by one of the young recruits. Barely a pup when he was smuggled aboard a troop transport to the front lines, he served in over 17 battles, providing morale boost up & down the trenches, early warning (through his enhanced sense of smell) for gas attacks, and even uncovering & capturing a german spy in the trenches. Though largely forgotten today, upon his return to the U.S., Stubby was met with a hero's welcome, and went on to become the original mascot for the Georgetown Hoyas. After his passing in 1926, his preserved remains were put on display by the Smithsonian, wearing the special coat he was given to hold the large number of medals & awards he received for his service in the Great War.
posted by jonson on Sep 1, 2007 - 29 comments

"Henry John Patch would be notable simply by virtue of his 109 years on earth... But Harry Patch is more than a gerontological phenomenon. The man arranging his medals and sitting up straight for a photograph in the conservatory of a nursing home in Wells is the last British man alive to have served in the trenches during the First World War."
posted by mr_crash_davis on Jul 12, 2007 - 26 comments

On this day in 1915 the ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat, which helped turn public sentiment in the US against Germany in The Great War. FirstWorldWar.com is your go to site for all things War to End All Wars related, from how it began to propaganda posters to maps to memoirs and diaries to the weapons and battles to audio and video and to the justly famous poetry of World War One. Also check out the feature articles and encyclopedia.
posted by Kattullus on May 7, 2007 - 12 comments

Sgt. Alvin C. York was the most decorated individual US Soldier in WWI. Subject of the top grossing movie of 1941, He was credited with capturing 138 German soldiers nearly single handedly by flanking a Machine gun nest, and killing its occupants. The Machine gun in question may be destroyed because the library that owns it does not have a proper license.
posted by Gungho on Apr 23, 2007 - 44 comments

451 Postcards from World War I. Personal notes, propaganda, battle memorials, etc.
posted by jonson on Dec 26, 2006 - 12 comments

Triplane Madness presents photos of a large selection of triplane (and quad- and quint- and more) experiments in avionics conducted in a wide variety of countries in the early days of aviation.
posted by mwhybark on Dec 23, 2006 - 8 comments

The Great War in the Air is a 69-part video project, clearly a labor of love, by one Jan Goldstein, a musician, painter, and publican. Overwhelmed? Here's a representative sample: Part 7, on the French ace Georges Guynemer. Please note: extensive use of YouTube. Many of the images seen in the film may be perused at earlyaviator.com.
posted by mwhybark on Nov 11, 2006 - 12 comments

A World War One sketchbook from an unknown soldier. Some of them are quite enigmatic.
posted by tellurian on Oct 11, 2006 - 18 comments

Etaples, 1917 - The first and last mutiny of the British Army. The story was first told in "The Monocled Mutineer" by William Allison & John Farley which was later made into a BBC drama (script written by Alan Bleasdale) broadcast in 1986. This program has never been shown since on British terrestrial TV and even resulted in questions being asked in Parliament about the BBC's left-wing bias. The true facts will be classified until 2017, 100 years after the events. [mi]
posted by longbaugh on Jan 5, 2006 - 10 comments

Last Survivor of 1914 Christmas Truce Dies in Scotland
posted by IndigoJones on Nov 21, 2005 - 18 comments

Frank Hurley. You may be familiar with his work for Shackleton on the Endurance. Magnificent stuff, but only a fraction of what he was capable of. After the ice, he went to Europe where he did some of the most haunting photographs of WWI. Click the pictures to continue the series- they defy selection. (He did reluctantly create some fakes for the propaganda effort, but most of his stuff is straight and the better for it.) After the war he continued to travel, and for those with some time on their hands, the Australian government has been good enough to put a few thousand items of his work on line here)
posted by IndigoJones on Nov 2, 2005 - 27 comments

On my 19th birthday in 1917, we were in the trenches at Passchendaele... Haig put a three-day barrage on the Germans, and thought, "Well, there can't be much left of them." I think it was the Yorkshires and Lancashires that went over. I watched them as they came out of their dugouts and the German machine guns just mowed them down. I doubt whether any of them reached the front line.
Harry Patch, Private, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Born June 17 1898.
Of the millions who fought in WWI, only a handful are still alive today -- and all are now well over 100 years old. With the horror of the trenches about to slip from living memory, Max Arthur has tracked down and interviewed these last survivors of the 'carnage incomparable'.
posted by matteo on Nov 1, 2005 - 27 comments

Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films as voted for by their (generally more clued-up than average) viewership has plenty for you to disagree with, but much to recommend. Filmsite.org has a history of war films (as does Berkeley) for the completists among you. There are more war films from and about Vietnam and Indochina than you can shake a bayonet at (see also the 1999 NYT article, Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films to learn a little about the Vietnamese government's 1960s and 70s archive of war film). The [British] national archives have archived film from pre-WWI to the Cold War.
posted by nthdegx on May 17, 2005 - 74 comments

First built in the 1920's, and predating the use of Radar in World War II, early warning "sound mirrors" were used to provide some means of detecting incoming enemy aircraft. First used in World War I to listen for Zeppelins, their vestigial remnants dot the English coastline. The bizarre legacy of the sound collectors lives on through some decidedly nerdy enterprises.
posted by basicchannel on Apr 7, 2005 - 27 comments

1917: The largest man-made non-nuclear explosion in history and yet (outside of Canada) a largely unknown disaster - The Halifax Explosion. [more inside]
posted by spock on Mar 21, 2005 - 43 comments

Aerial Propaganda Leaflet Database. Propaganda from WWI to Operation Iraqi Freedom, including many safe conduct passes. Also, leaflets from the Korean War & Vietnam, Sefton Delmer's "Black Propaganda Radio, and even some NSFW (work, not war) propaganda. Come On Boys, Himmler For President!
posted by armage on Mar 9, 2005 - 6 comments

Armistice Day: WW1 Document Archive. Verdun memorial. The Western Front today. A World War One Literature Blog. Trenches on the Web, unsurprisingly slammed today, it seems.

Consider visiting a nearby military cemetary today. I've found it to be a worthwhile use of my time in the past.
posted by mwhybark on Nov 11, 2004 - 6 comments

Color Photographs of the French Army in WW1 (via MemeFirst)
posted by pandaharma on Oct 15, 2004 - 19 comments

June 28th is the 90th Anniversary of the terrorist assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which touched off the First World War. The world today is not much different then 90 years ago. Nuclear 1914: The Next Big Worry, by Henry Sokolski.
posted by stbalbach on Jun 28, 2004 - 7 comments

Before and After
Cosmetic surgery was born 2,500 years ago and came of age in the inferno of the Western Front. The Great War not only gave birth to plastic surgery as a modern medical specialty but also marked a rare moment when the proponents of reconstructive or “serious” surgery and the defenders of cosmetic or “frivolous” surgery declared a truce in what would become a long and morally charged battle.
posted by Irontom on Jun 14, 2004 - 3 comments

World War I Document Archive. Treaties, diplomatic documents and, of course, photos. even ee cummings.
posted by turbodog on Aug 25, 2003 - 4 comments

Photos of the Great War is a collection of nearly 2,000 photos from World War One, ranging from the tragic to the peaceful to the unexpected. It also contains war albums by ordinary soldiers (such as this German machinegunner or U.S. sergeant) and a section devoted entirely to animals, featuring things like this gas-mask-wearing dog.
posted by Ljubljana on Jun 2, 2003 - 4 comments

World War 1 Memoirs and Diaries , by soldiers, nurses and chaplains. 'With the advent of the world wide web, an opportunity arose for the descendants of many survivors to publish fragments of diary entries for the education and interest of others. '
The diary of Edwin Jones, who fought in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Via the firstworldwar.com website, which also features poetry and prose (including an overview of British World War 1 satire and how it reflected the class system at the time); propaganda posters; and miscellaneous features on everything from the Christmas truce to the disputed sexuality of T.E. Lawrence.
Related :- an interview with one of the last British WW1 survivors, aged 107 ('I survived the trenches - and would never go back'), and the BBC's 80th anniversary site, which includes five poignant, sometimes tragic, letters from soldiers to family and friends.
posted by plep on Mar 31, 2003 - 8 comments

The Fatal Salient. The First World War remembered; the letters and paintings of one of the participants, Harold Sandys Williamson. This and more via The Imperial War Museum's online exhibitions. [more inside]
posted by plep on Mar 19, 2003 - 4 comments

"The Christmas truce was the last twitch of the 19th Century. By that, I mean it was the last public moment in which it was assumed that people were nice, and that the Dickens view of the world was a credible view." -- Paul Fussell

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an interesting footnote in history where German and British soldiers stopped fighting and fraternized in the middle of the battlefield. Some witnesses have claimed that enemy soldiers played a friendly game of soccer.

The events have since been chronicled in print, song, and on film.
posted by MattS on Dec 14, 2001 - 4 comments

In Flanders Fields - by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields


MetaFilter readers wherever you are, please take a moment of silence to honour those who gave their lives so that we could live ours.
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Nov 11, 2001 - 75 comments

Prototype mechanical soldier tried out in WWI! Your challenge on this site is to separate fact from fiction.
posted by beagle on Oct 25, 2001 - 16 comments

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US Part Deux?? Old World War 1 and 2 posters, revamped. I'm kinda liking this weird trend of glorifying bad translations via Photoshop.
posted by Succa on Feb 16, 2001 - 12 comments