By Ben Marks — This year marks the centennial of the Christmas Truce of 1914, in which pockets of German, British, and French troops along the Western Front laid down their arms to share cigarettes, bury their dead, and sing Christmas carols—in some places for a few hours, in others for several days. Between July 28, 1914 and November 11, 1918, World War I claimed upwards of 20 million lives. As a small pause in the carnage, the Christmas Truce was a fleeting moment of humanity amid unimaginable...

War and Prosthetics: How Veterans Fought for the Perfect Artificial Limb

By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — There's something undeniably beautiful about prosthetic limbs, designed to echo the physical grace and mechanical engineering of the human body. For most people, these objects elicit some combination of squeamish discomfort and utmost respect. But far fewer of us connect those feelings to the untold generations of battle-scarred amputees whose sacrifices made prosthetics a public priority. "Patients even have doctors sign non-disclosure forms to protect potential patents." “You hate to...

Show and Tellers Reunite Japanese Family With Their World War II Letter

By Ben Marks — At their best, Show & Tell posts reveal "the stories behind the stuff." But two Show & Tellers, Savoychina1 and VikingFan82, have proven that sometimes Show & Tell can do much, much more. In their case, they made connections between people separated by language, the world's biggest ocean, and more than half a century. I won't retell the whole tale since Savoychina1 has done such a fine job here. Long story short, Savoychina1 had a box of military photographs, postcards, and letters,...

The Patriotic Envelope in Civil War Days

By James Brush Hatcher — The spontaneous upsurge of Blue and Gray patriotism generated by the Civil War is amazingly well caught and preserved in the colorful, heroic, flag-waving and caricaturing envelope designs with which lithographers and printers flooded the nation in the Abe Lincoln-Jeff Davis period. The "patriotic envelope" is a war-time propaganda phenomenon which was repeated in Spanish-American days and is with us again in the current conflict. Flags, eagles, clasped hands and figures of Columbia...