On December 10, 1906 the president of the United States was awarded the Nobel Prize prize for peace. It was a controversial award. The award represents the unique time in history, the complex legacy of the nations twenty-sixth president, and the persistent disagreement over an award for peace given in a world where reality makes peace uncommon at best.
The name USS Arizona is among the most famous of the Navy, but for all the wrong reasons. She was a ship of war that became a symbol of war, but which, perhaps, most represented the peacetime Navy.
Few examples of early aviation ambition exceeded the lofty goals set for the Airship America and forgotten aviation pioneers Walter Wellman and Melvin Vaniman. Plus a cat.
Occurring just twelve days before the end of the war, the loss of the USS Indianapolis to torpedoes from the Japanese submarine I-58 represented the greatest single loss of life at sea in the history of the U.S. Navy. The event has been dramatized and eulogized, perhaps most famously in a chilling scene from the 1975 film Jaws. But in the face of mistakes and incompetence came self-sacrifice and heroism that deserves to be remembered.