If you’ve spent any time looking through Fold3’s WWII War Diaries, you probably know it as a huge collection of action reports and day-to-day activity records submitted by Navy and Marine Corps units. But if you dig a little deeper into the collection, you’ll find that it also has more than 800 pages of personal…
On October 19, 1781, after almost 2 weeks of being under siege, the British troops at Yorktown, Virginia, surrendered to combined American and French forces, effectively signaling the beginning of the end of the Revolutionary War. A few weeks before the American and French troops began their bombardment of the British defenses at Yorktown, the…
On October 19, 1864, a small force of Confederates launched a raid from Canada on St. Albans, Vermont, just 15 miles from the border, in the northernmost engagement of the Civil War. Almost two dozen Confederates—mainly escaped prisoners of war—trickled into the Vermont town over the course of a few days so as not to…
One of Fold3’s newest titles is the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. Like its name suggests, this collection contains the two navies’ official reports, orders, and correspondence from the Civil War. If you’re interested in the Civil War, this is the go-to title for contemporary, first-hand information about the Northern and Southern…
On September 2, 1945, Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender, officially ending World War II. Despite the fact that Japan’s defeat seemed imminent all that summer, it wasn’t until after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—at nearly the same time that the Soviets declared war on Japan and attacked Manchuria—that Japan saw surrender…
In May 1864, Union general William T. Sherman began his invasion of Georgia, going up against Confederate general Joseph Johnston in a series of battles and skirmishes throughout early and mid-summer. But in July, President Jefferson Davis, unhappy with Johnston’s tactics, replaced him with the more aggressive John Bell Hood. Sherman’s and Hood’s men clashed…
This August 24 and 25 mark the 200th anniversary of the British burning of Washington DC during the War of 1812. Prior to the burning, 4,500 British soldiers went up against 5,000 Americans (mostly militiamen) in a battle at Bladensburg, Maryland, just 4 miles northeast of Washington. Though the Americans had the advantage of numbers…
