Author: James Wesley Rawles

On December 14, 1542, Princess Mary Stuart succeeded her father James V to become Queen Mary I of Scotland, at just six days old. — December 14, 1702:  The famed forty-seven Ronin (leaderless samurai), under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenges the death of their master in Japan. — December 14th is the birthday of the late John Warren Wadleigh (born 1927, died September 24, 2013). Wadleigh was better known to many SurvivalBlog readers by his pen name– Oliver Lange. He was the author of the best-selling resistance warfare novel Vandenberg. — This is also the birthday of Air Force …

On December 13, 1266, rebels that were holed up inside Kenilworth Castle surrendered after 172 days to Henry III, ending one of the longest sieges in medieval English history. Here is an excerpt from a piece at English-heritage.org: “In the mid 1260s England was divided by civil war. Henry III, who had been on the throne since 1216, was at loggerheads with some of his leading nobles, who wanted to reform how the king governed. Their leader was the king’s brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who defeated the king’s forces at the Battle of Lewes in 1264 and …

December 12, 1914: The largest one-day percentage drop in the history of Dow Jones Industrial Average. It was down 24.39%. — December 12, 1953: Chuck Yeager reached Mach 2.43 in a Bell X-1A rocket plane. — And on December 12, 2019, the British General Election was won by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in a landslide win with 80-seat majority. The Scottish National Party also won 48 of 59 seats in Scotland. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 116 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include: First Prize: The photovoltaic power …

On December 11, 1913, DaVinci’s “Mona Lisa” was recovered two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum. — December 11, 1978: Six masked men bound 10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at NYC Kennedy Airport and made off with $5.8 Lillion USD in cash and jewelry. All of the participants and some associates were later killed on order of the alleged organized crime mastermind. The loot was never recovered. — SurvivalBlog Writing Contest Today we present another entry for Round 116 of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The prizes for this round include: First Prize: The photovoltaic power …

On December 10, 1907, Rudyard Kipling received the Nobel prize for literature, the first English-language writer to do so. — On December 10, 1869, while still a territory, Wyoming became the first state to grant women the right to vote. — And on this day in 1942, my great uncle Lt. Robert I. Kinsella was killed when his B-24 bomber (part of the 90th Bombardment Group, Heavy, 320th Bomber Squadron), flying from the Iron Range Airfield in Northern Queensland, Australia went down in the South Pacific. — Gerber Gear (maker of knives and multi-tools  and one of our affiliate advertisers) …