Jon Bock

Feb 27, 2024 | historynet.com | Jon Bock |Carl Zebrowski

Frederick Pabst was captain of a Great Lakes steamer when Maria Best came aboard his ship and caught his attention. He started courting her, the daughter of the owner of Milwaukee’s Phillip Best Beer Company, and they married in 1862. It didn’t take long for his new father-in-law to talk him into giving up the wheelhouse for the brewhouse.

Feb 20, 2024 | historynet.com | Jon Bock |David T. Zabecki

On Jan. 30, 1968, all U.S. combat units in Vietnam went to alert status when the Viet Cong violated the Tet Cease-fire by attacking Da Nang and eleven other cities in the center of the country. The 9th Infantry Division’s 2nd Battalion, 47th Infantry (Mechanized) deployed to overwatch positions around the sprawling American logistics base at Long Binh, which was also the headquarters of U.S. II Field Forces. Early the following morning, Jan.

Feb 20, 2024 | historynet.com | Jon Bock |Carl Zebrowski

It’s about time we get to know Gerald Ford. We know his predecessor, Richard Nixon, who handed his vice president the presidency by resigning during the Watergate proceedings in 1974. We know the man who defeated him in the presidential election two years later, Jimmy Carter, and the man who in turn defeated Carter, Ronald Reagan, and went on to redefine the Republican Party.

Feb 16, 2024 | historynet.com | Jon Bock |David T. Zabecki

British naval historian and geostrategist Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922) was a contemporary of renowned American naval strategist Rear Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914). Unlike Mahan, Corbett had no personal military or naval experience, which prompted many senior officers in the Admiralty to view him and his theories with skepticism. A misconception persists that the ideas of Mahan and Corbett are in opposition, that one must accept one or the other. But that is an oversimplification.

Feb 13, 2024 | historynet.com | Jon Bock |Peter Carlson

Florenz Ziegfeld—the most famous showman of his time, and a genius of that great American art form, the publicity stunt—began his career with an animal act: “The Dancing Ducks of Denmark.”   Actually, the ducks, like Ziegfeld, were Illinois natives, and they danced because Ziegfeld heated their feet with a hidden flame. Outraged, Chicago’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals shut down the show.