It should have been 1 May, but it had been pushed to June 5 to make more equipment and vehicles available. On the day the weather was bad — far too tricky to attempt something like what the Allies had in the offing. Delays to what would be called Operation…

It was a threat so divorced from its obvious repercussions as to be unbelievable. Since pulling the trigger, the world has been scrambling to figure out just what Vladimir Putin was or ­- more crucially is — thinking. True, his sort of mind has got to be a fairly murky…

I was taking my mother to Ash Wednesday services when Father Gargantutus stuck his massive thumb the holy ash-pot and put the sign of the cross on my forehead. That was when I saw a falling black snow of soot drifting onto my hands, shirt and pants. I resisted to…

Sitting on the black leather couch in the salon doré in his gilt office in the Elysée Palace, France’s president Emmanuel Marcon isn’t happy. He’s furious and — quit smirking — is a very French kind of fury: Rooted on the unshakable belief that France is special among nations, fated…

In 1939, Winston Churchill said, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in mystery inside of an enigma.” It was more bewilderment than sneer, although he was as famously as anti-Bolshevik as pro-American. President Roosevelt liked Churchill, but not enough to keep him…

It’s a name you need to know, if for no other reason that it works so well. A Cold War innovation from behind the Iron Curtain that has found new life. Unlike that other enduring socialist innovation of mass famine (which really is only possible with lots of central planning)…

On 24 February 1902 at least one of Cuba’s revolution actually achieved its goals and got stamped as Cuban Independence Day. It didn’t last and by any practical definition of the word, they lost it 50 years later. Like salsa dancing, Cuban history isn’t exactly straightforward to the gringo. They…

Brandy — the liquor, not the short-lived singing sensation — has two seeming incompatible image problems. Most people think of it as either the favorite of either a) the stodgy British upper class or b) a decidedly more urban hip hop sorts or their hangers on. Two demographics not normally…

Even in Iraq’s Shi’a south, the local Arabs mock the Persians across the Shatt al-Arab waterway for worshipping fire. It’s a little pre-Muslim dig at Zoroastrianism’s central symbol. To the frustration of Iran’s mullahs, old habits die hard — Zoroastrian style wedding ceremonies involving prayers around a fire are so…